Paths of Civilization

[tryrar]

tally

Vote Tally : Paths of Civilization | Page 881 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.8.3
[48] Scaling labour payment (???)
[47] Quota + Fractional (???)
[47] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)
[14] Quota
[14] Flat labour payment
[10] Private ownership, communal inheritance (+1 Stability)
[4] Communal ownership, lifetime assignment
[3] Full, communal (Status quo)
[2] Communal work for communal rations (Status quo)
[2] Communal ownership, hereditary assignment (+1 Stability)
[1] Private ownership, familial inheritance (???)
[1] Scaling labor payment (???)
[1] Communal ownership, leadership assigned
[1] Fractional
Total No. of Voters: 66

 

[VoidZero]

Vote private land ownership!

[] Private ownership, familial inheritance (???)

The status quo already give effective land inheritance to chiefs via land assignment, why should we allow this transgression to continue?

If a farmer have farmed all his life, wouldn't he better maintain and improve the land if his children will farm the same land?

Generation of land experience accumulated will give our farmer better understanding of his land, if compare to frequent land reassignment during a lifetime.

 

[ctulhuslp]

If a farmer have farmed all his life, wouldn't he better maintain and improve the land if his children will farm the same land?

Click to shrink...

No, not really. Professional teams of people best suited to working this or that task are better than traditions; like, a lot of ecological disasters were engineered by 'farmers who have farmed all their life'. We, as a civ, may not be good at a lot of things, but we are good at sustainable agriculture, better than any individual entrepreneurs can be without exhausting their land.

EDIT to remove double post:
I mean, this thread has seen some very surprising turnarounds against bandwagons, but 34 votes difference....

I think we should think more on what different combinations of changes mean, because the individual ones are pretty decently discussed at this point.

 

[Abby Normal]

Just a reminder to people:

AN has confirmed that the second choice, NON TRANSFERABLE PRODUCTIVITY TAXATION, represents how individuals pay for goods. The status quo is 100% social welfare, all individuals are giving a number of goods with which to live and work by. The first option requires a set number of days worked for certain class distinctions (artisans have to work X to get basic necessities and Y that they need, wrestlers have to do Z work to get their basic necessities). The final option scales it based on WHAT THEY ALREADY HAVE.

Click to shrink...

I admit, thats not how i read the explanation:

The cows thing is simply an easily conceived of example. There would be things like "In order to use stone from a quarry, a mason must contribute X days of labour to the group in compensation" or "In order to use a communal kiln for private work, a potter must do Y days labour elsewhere". It's a corvee system for dealing with the fact that there's no currency system and thus you can't just tax income and be done with it.

Click to shrink...

My reading was that its not "how individuals pay for goods", its "how is non-good or non-tangible work, and things that are too perishable to spread taxed", as well as "how do people who rely on state goods and infrastructure pay for using said goods/infrastructure". If i understand right, in all 3 options everyone still gets a "number of goods with which to live on", the difference is whether their taxes take the form of "your work goes to the state and then is dispensed as needed", "X days of work depending on job go to the state to be distributed, you can use or sell the rest of your labour as needed", or "for every X amount of public goods/infrastructure you use for your job, Y days of work go to the state to be distributed, you can use or sell the rest of your labour" Unless thats what you meant, and i just read your phrasing too broadly?

Edit: And judging from AN liking this post i'm assuming my interpretation is at least mostly right

 

[VoidZero]

No, not really. Professional teams of people best suited to working this or that task are better than traditions; like, a lot of ecological disasters were engineered by 'farmers who have farmed all their life'. We, as a civ, may not be good at a lot of things, but we are good at sustainable agriculture, better than any individual entrepreneurs can be without exhausting their land.

Click to shrink...

I'm not aware we have teams of "professional farmer" at this point in time. Our shamans aren't involved in farming, nor do we have farming education. Practically majority of our farmers are generation farmers due to time period restrictions.

 

[Lailoken]

Communal land management is also basically the entire reason for the existence of our government, much like the existence of most other governments at this time seems to be for the sake of military safety.

Getting rid of communal land management at this juncture is effectively getting rid of our government's reason to exist, and by extension its long term legitimacy as far as I'm concerned. What reason does our government have to exist if it doesn't manage the land people are working? Military safety on the local level isn't a concern for over half of our population.


No, we were told that people are assigned land to work depending on the need for land to work. The shuffling around is done for optimization purposes, not as a means of administrators screwing people. It was administrators looking at the last group of people, claiming they did the work and offering 'end work bonuses' that was the problem. That was corruption, where people were exploiting a hole in the system. It was noted, several times, I believe at once by AN, that the system is actually super efficient in regards to managing the land.

We want to keep this, we just need to deal with corruption when it pops up, but that holds true for all forms of government.

Click to shrink...

This is dictator thinking. The same argument could be made for requiring a government license to use the public oxygen if it could be effectively enforced. If the government can't survive without monopolizing arbitrary necessities, it probably shouldn't. This government still provides social stability, public infrastructure, peaceful conflict resolution, and a welfare program which is generous by modern standards.

The problem is local administrators locating well-tended farms due to have a bumper crop, then assigning them to their friends so they could get the bonuses associated with the high yields as they ran it into the ground, then reassigning them to another well-run farm when the yields dropped. This problem isn't solved. The hole is still there. If assignments are made as private property the hole is closed, because the administrators can't just seize well-run farms. They could preferentially assign well-run farms to their friends when they return to the pool, but only once. It removes the dump from pump and dump. You could achieve something similar with lifetime assignments, but then there's no recourse, not even private market forces, for somebody doing a bad job.

-and The People are extremely productive due to the extreme capital investment they've put into the land, not the system it has been done under. It's entirely possible to have private ownership and high capital investment at the same time.

 

[Sightsear]

I seeeeee yoouu~ @Sightsear.

Click to shrink...

*EEP!*

Ya caught me, I do pop in and out occasionally to see what's going on. I haven't been bothering to stay on top of all the discussion, but it doesn't look too bad right now.

Honestly, the biggest problem I think we're having with our tax code is that we're essentially way ahead of our time here. We're basically running a Planned Economy, like what they tried to do with Soviet Russia. Of course, it's working a fair shake better than that since our culture is basically custom built to DO this. Unfortunately, we're also starting to reach an economy of scale where our tech can barely handle the strain that keeping track of everything is causing. Hm, makes me think of a conversation I had with my brother recently, about the Kanban System, and Pull vs Push Economies.

So, the Kanban was the administrative solution that Imperial Japan deviced to resolve, or at least easy, their chronic resource shortages: Basically, you start with what you want produced, than you order the supplies to build it, who will in turn order the supplies that they'll need to build what's being ordered, eventually ending with the basic resources needed to do anything. This was a massive leap forward in terms of resource efficiency, as only those resources that are needed are produced (plus a small stockpile proportionate with past needs). This is the origins of the "Pull" economy, which essentially every modern economy now uses, and lines up nicely with the concepts of Supply and Demand.

But if the Pull Economy is a relatively new concept, what preceded it? The "Push" Economy, of course! Where the Pull Economy starts with the end producer ordering supplies from further up the chain, the Push Economy starts with the producer's of raw resources creating massive stockpiles, and then selling to anyone who buys. The disconnect is that when your emphasis is on producing the raw materials, you can end up building up massive surpluses that nobody actually needs, and have thus either wasted a lot of effort, or sabotaged your own prices. But if the Pull Economy is such a clear refinement over the Push Economy, why didn't we start with one instead of the other?

Well, in part that would be because not that long ago (one, maybe two centuries) the infrastructure that makes the Pull Economy simply didn't exist. Or at least not in great enough quantities to make it practical. Remember, the people who would really care about this sort of thing are usually empires that had, and often still did, sprawled across the globe. For the bulk of that time, communication wasn't much faster than transportation, and transportation from supplier to producer could easily take weeks, if not months! Since nobody wants to wait for six months to start making all the things, then the path to efficiency swings towards the Push Economy: it's much more economical to create a stockpile of the Supply in advance, so that Demand can be met in a timely manner.

"Alright, that's interesting and all, because we're all intellectuals who are fascinated by history, because la-de-da," I hear you saying, "but what the fucking hell does this have to do with anything?"

Well, my erudite friends, this was all an overly long explanation to get across a single point: The most efficient solution to a problem is very much dependent on what technology you have available, so advanced solutions may be less efficient than there "primitive" predecessors.

...Plus I really wanted to share the whole Kanban thing, and it's been ages (like, maybe a week?) since I've actually contributed anything to this thread. Just because I've deliberately avoiding the disscussion, doesn't mean I don't like it. I'm just not up to walking into any stressful situations right now, which discussion here is primed to do on any given vote.

Can't say I blame you guys, every vote is pretty monumental in it's implications for what happens next, so of course that generates salt. I think I did a write up about that once on SB, maybe I'll dig it up and cross post it, if I haven't already...

3110 Dear lord, this turned out long.

 

[Academia Nut]

Is it just me, or does it sound really weird for a quest about stone-age farmers to use terms like "Non-transferable Productivity Taxation" or "Primary Productivity Taxation"?

Click to shrink...

The People aren't, I'm just using these terms because they're relatively non-ambiguous for the voters.

 

[ctulhuslp]

Okay, so, let me try my hand at analysing currently winning combination:
Quota + Fractional/Scaling labour payment/Communal ownership, leadership assigned.

First option basically means 'everybody pays out some minimal amount of resources and pays a small part of everything above'. Heavily burdens people, though still leaves them more than the current system, and gives only mild incentive to work hard enough to overcome quota.
Second option says 'amount of corvee owned to the state scales with the amount of non-transferable goods you own', which disincentivizes owning a lot of said non-transferables, thus disincentivizing, say, masonry(!!!!) or other skilled work which does not produce transportable stuff.

Combined with the Q+F, this probably heavily disincentivizes works of every kind, but strains the bureaucracy immensely because of all accounting required.

Third option says 'state has the one and only say in who work what and for how long'. On its own, probably disincentivizes innovation and poking at things to a degree and strains the administrative apparatus, but ensures sustainability by making sure no overly stupid things come to pass; besides, plenty of innovations like terra preta or terraced farms were made with this system, so I may be wrong about its effects.

Combined with the previous two options, it creates a situation where worker would work on something which state has assigned to him, give away minimal quota of things and will be taxed out of the rest/get obligated to work some mandated amount which scales with...what?

@Academia Nut , if we use, say, mason, what would Flat and Scaling systems mean? Because I do not understand with what it is supposed to scale - with amount of stone he works through or what?

 

[Lydia]

[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Scaling labour payment (???)
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)

 

[ctulhuslp]

This is dictator thinking. The same argument could be made for requiring a government license to use the public oxygen if it could be effectively enforced. If the government can't survive without monopolizing arbitrary necessities, it probably shouldn't. This government still provides social stability, public infrastructure, peaceful conflict resolution, and a welfare program which is generous by modern standards.

The problem is local administrators locating well-tended farms due to have a bumper crop, then assigning them to their friends so they could get the bonuses associated with the high yields as they ran it into the ground, then reassigning them to another well-run farm when the yields dropped. This problem isn't solved. The hole is still there. If assignments are made as private property the hole is closed, because the administrators can't just seize well-run farms. They could preferentially assign well-run farms to their friends when they return to the pool, but only once. It removes the dump from pump and dump. You could achieve something similar with lifetime assignments, but then there's no recourse, not even private market forces, for somebody doing a bad job.

-and The People are extremely productive due to the extreme capital investment they've put into the land, not the system it has been done under. It's entirely possible to have private ownership and high capital investment at the same time.

Click to shrink...

And still, as the history shows, there are plenty of ways to use the land in a way which is fine for several decades, but crippling over centuries; that problem is kind of more important than higher yields.

 

[Academia Nut]

if we use, say, mason, what would Flat and Scaling systems mean? Because I do not understand with what it is supposed to scale - with amount of stone he works through or what?

Click to shrink...

Okay, Flat is "You're a skilled craftsman of some sort, in exchange for receiving regular rations for you and your family, you are required to work X1​ number of days for the community each year based off of some standard scheme, the rest is yours to do with as you see fit. Also, if you aren't a farmer with an easily taxed output, we'll also ask some smaller number of days of labour to compensate for your drawing on community resources." The amount of labour owed the state is basically the same for everyone

Scaling is "You're a skilled craftsman of some sort, in exchange for receiving regular rations and utilizing communal resources, you are required to work X2​ + Y number of days for the community each year, where X2​ is based on how much rations you draw and Y is based off of your utilization. Also, if you aren't a farmer with an easily taxed output, we'll also ask some number of days of labour per item to compensate for your drawing on community resources." With this the amount of labour owed the state varies depending on how heavily someone utilizes community resources. It's more complicated, but theoretically people who are using more resources are also paying back more to the community.

 

[Kiba]

Alternative Timeline when Ymrri civilization begins at different ages or even at different location:

• Ionian War - Ymrri punitive invasion of Greece after the expulsion and destruction of several Ionian city-states. the Ymrri neither enslave nor steal women, but scatter the survivors, some which immigrate directly to the Ymrri.
  
• Mediterranean War - Ymrri replace Carthage as Rome's opponent.

 

[Lailoken]

And still, as the history shows, there are plenty of ways to use the land in a way which is fine for several decades, but crippling over centuries; that problem is kind of more important than higher yields.

Click to shrink...

-and yet, despite being tenant farmers with no guarantee that they'll keep the land in their family for centuries or even a lifetime, the People haven't had that problem. It's already offset by the shared social value, not the economic system.

 

[ctulhuslp]

Alternative Timeline when Ymrri civilization begins at different ages or even at different location:

• Ionian War - Ymrri punitive invasion of Greece after the expulsion and destruction of several Ionian city-states. the Ymrri neither enslave nor steal women, but scatter the survivors, some which immigrate directly to the Ymrri.
  
• Mediterranean War - Ymrri replaced Carthage.

Click to shrink...

Rome - Ymmri remove the city and salt forest the earth where it stood.

Okay, Flat is "You're a skilled craftsman of some sort, in exchange for receiving regular rations for you and your family, you are required to work X1​ number of days for the community each year based off of some standard scheme, the rest is yours to do with as you see fit. Also, if you aren't a farmer with an easily taxed output, we'll also ask some smaller number of days of labour to compensate for your drawing on community resources." The amount of labour owed the state is basically the same for everyone

Scaling is "You're a skilled craftsman of some sort, in exchange for receiving regular rations and utilizing communal resources, you are required to work X2​ + Y number of days for the community each year, where X2​ is based on how much rations you draw and Y is based off of your utilization. Also, if you aren't a farmer with an easily taxed output, we'll also ask some number of days of labour per item to compensate for your drawing on community resources." With this the amount of labour owed the state varies depending on how heavily someone utilizes community resources. It's more complicated, but theoretically people who are using more resources are also paying back more to the community.

Click to shrink...

Thanks.
I think it is better to go with Flat and correct it once problems of overusing resources arise and we've sorted out basic hurdles of the new system.

@Academia Nut I assume that Quota + Fraction has lower Quota that pure Quota-based system, right? Or the same?

 

[ctulhuslp]

-and yet, despite being tenant farmers with no guarantee that they'll keep the land in their family for centuries or even a lifetime, the People haven't had that problem. It's already offset by the shared social value, not the economic system.

Click to shrink...

It's offset by peer pressure and administration often reviewing the results of someone's work while shuffling things around; giving it to the private ownership will remove both of these limiters - there is not much peer pressure to be Good To The Land if it's your land and you do what you want, and there is less governmental oversight of private property because, well, it's private.

 

[Academia Nut]

I assume that Quota + Fraction has lower Quota that pure Quota-based system, right? Or the same?

Click to shrink...

Yes, the base quota would be lower because they would also be taking a fraction of the remaining productivity.

 

[Versharl]

[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Scaling labour payment (???)
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)

This will likely cause problems because of the complexity of scaling and fractional taxation but I still prefer it over the other options. It might also cause innovation in administration down the line due to necessity. We've seen such innovation happen countless times and while it might hurt initially, it'll be better in the long run.

 

[Lailoken]

It's offset by peer pressure and administration often reviewing the results of someone's work while shuffling things around; giving it to the private ownership will remove both of these limiters - there is not much peer pressure to be Good To The Land if it's your land and you do what you want, and there is less governmental oversight of private property because, well, it's private.

Click to shrink...

The "results" being yields, which don't address issues of individual sub-century thinking. The only force really addressing this is the social value, and the real reason we don't have salinity concerns probably has more to do with rain irrigation and hilly terrain than anything else. To whatever small extent official regulation is already responsible it still can be, since we already use hands-off results-focused judgement, communal inheritance gives the community a legitimate stake, and private property doesn't mean total exemption from important regulation. We're not handing out absolute allodial titles here. This is mostly about whether or not people can buy, sell, and lease land between reassignments.

 

[minerva-n-memes]

[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Scaling labour payment (???)
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)

I really want to keep our current economic system as-is but there's pressure to change and it's only going to get worse if we don't make changes, so this feels to me like the best way to preserve the spirit of the system while making much needed reforms.

 

[BungieONI]

Okay, so, let me try my hand at analysing currently winning combination:
Quota + Fractional/Scaling labour payment/Communal ownership, leadership assigned.

First option basically means 'everybody pays out some minimal amount of resources and pays a small part of everything above'. Heavily burdens people, though still leaves them more than the current system, and gives only mild incentive to work hard enough to overcome quota.
Second option says 'amount of corvee owned to the state scales with the amount of non-transferable goods you own', which disincentivizes owning a lot of said non-transferables, thus disincentivizing, say, masonry(!!!!) or other skilled work which does not produce transportable stuff.

Combined with the Q+F, this probably heavily disincentivizes works of every kind, but strains the bureaucracy immensely because of all accounting required.

Third option says 'state has the one and only say in who work what and for how long'. On its own, probably disincentivizes innovation and poking at things to a degree and strains the administrative apparatus, but ensures sustainability by making sure no overly stupid things come to pass; besides, plenty of innovations like terra preta or terraced farms were made with this system, so I may be wrong about its effects.

Combined with the previous two options, it creates a situation where worker would work on something which state has assigned to him, give away minimal quota of things and will be taxed out of the rest/get obligated to work some mandated amount which scales with...what?

@Academia Nut , if we use, say, mason, what would Flat and Scaling systems mean? Because I do not understand with what it is supposed to scale - with amount of stone he works through or what?

Click to shrink...

Hmm!

Okay, Flat is "You're a skilled craftsman of some sort, in exchange for receiving regular rations for you and your family, you are required to work X1​ number of days for the community each year based off of some standard scheme, the rest is yours to do with as you see fit. Also, if you aren't a farmer with an easily taxed output, we'll also ask some smaller number of days of labour to compensate for your drawing on community resources." The amount of labour owed the state is basically the same for everyone

Scaling is "You're a skilled craftsman of some sort, in exchange for receiving regular rations and utilizing communal resources, you are required to work X2​ + Y number of days for the community each year, where X2​ is based on how much rations you draw and Y is based off of your utilization. Also, if you aren't a farmer with an easily taxed output, we'll also ask some number of days of labour per item to compensate for your drawing on community resources." With this the amount of labour owed the state varies depending on how heavily someone utilizes community resources. It's more complicated, but theoretically people who are using more resources are also paying back more to the community.

Click to shrink...

Hmmm!! Ok I'm okay with scaling then. It is certainly a little more complicated but the benefits are: we discourage a noble class forming and the assorted hording behavior, silly decrees, and power bloc forming problems that are a part of the noble set up. It also means that our heaviest users, i.e innovators perhaps are also giving back to the community, encouraging the spread of their ideas. An example, an inventor finds a way to produce a slightly better pot, it takes a few more resources to create but let's him store things longer. So what I see this scaling doing is that because he is taking more resources to produce this new pot, he is taxed a bit more heavily and part of those taxes are some of these better pots, which spread through the People and then folks start to wonder how this was done and experiment. Kinda thinking this out and speculating but it seems reasonable.

Again, this whole mess exists because the exact opposite was happening. There's a reason why the status quo option has an effective stability hit. It doesn't solve the original problem. As a general rule, people take better care of personal long-term investments. Lifetime is enough- it doesn't need to be perpetual and hereditary with all those problems that come with that, but if you at the same time also don't allow people swap with each other you just create new ways for the administrators who caused this problem to screw people over. Private ownership, communal inheritance solves the original problem without creating new aristocratic problems.

Click to shrink...

So I'm pretty sure that AN has specifically stated that the system of communal ownership leader assigned is working. And working well. It's a large part of our productivity because we can cycle flexibly. But that is less important to my point and has already been covered. I agree that people will care for investments, that's just logical and makes sense. The things that makes me choose to stay with this over the others are several fold.

To begin there is the idea that the chiefs who were corrupted are dead now because of time passing. So that source is gone. Other can and will of course figure it out but it is not an active problem now. It really only seems to crop up at negative stability to, since it is mostly a panic response of Protective Justice on the chiefs parts. For the most part. There are almost certainly asshole chiefs who just do it because they are dicks.

Next is that the hole is still there. But we know where the stupid thing is. And our government has experience in solving the corruption that springs from it. A known quantity if you will. A new system of Private ownership, communal inheritance would pop the dump part of pump and dump and close the hole. I think. But it would open new holes that we would have to find. We likely wouldn't notice a problem/corruption using one of these new holes for quite some time, till the hole was discovered. So a new system in this part lets new holes in while closing old ones. Another thing private ownership is a really really strange concept for the People. In their entire 600ish year history they haven't really operated like that so I see it being a large source of instability and issues.

What I also just thought of, and has been sort-of brought up is that it does not cover the buying and selling of land. Taking this out with some thought I realized it might not close the pump and dump hole. How? Well imagine a scenario where skilled folks get a chunk of land, the same sort of folks that got screwed by last hit shenanigans, and they work it well. Then a corrupt chief wants to give his friends this great land, so he leans on the skilled folks, pushing them to sell to his friends. They are eventually forced to sell, by the chief pushing penalties and fines for any reason he/she can find on to them and then his friends get this nice land.

So basically the problem morphed instead of being solved. It would also be a morph we as the government have much less authority and ability to correct since it would appear to be a private transaction between landowners and we would not have any laws regarding selling and buying of land. At least with leadership assigned we can point to the corrupt chief and "what the hell!?". Under the private scheme we could really only suspect him unless we caught him in the act, making our poor Blackbirds jobs harder. The only release valve we have in place for the private version is the appeals court, and that is threatened because the corrupt chief might threaten their victims and the victims won't come to the King to tell them of the problem because of this and Harmony making them want to not make a fuss.

-and how is it solved? The update explicitly says that there is an effective stability hit to maintaining the status quo because it doesn't solve the original problem of the administrators abusing or being perceived as abusing their powers.

Click to shrink...

There is an effective stability hit of -2 if we take Status Quo in everything. Because people would be getting angry about us doing nothing. If we change only one thing that particular hit won't happen.

The "results" being yields, which don't address issues of individual sub-century thinking. The only force really addressing this is the social value, and the real reason we don't have desalinization concerns probably has more to do with rain irrigation and hilly terrain than anything else. To whatever small extent official regulation is already responsible it still can be, since we already use hands-off results-focused judgement, communal inheritance gives the community a legitimate stake, and private property doesn't mean total exemption from important regulation. We're not handing out absolute allodial titles here. This is mostly about whether or not people can buy, sell, and lease land between reassignments.

Click to shrink...

Lailo, private ownership communal inheritance basically seems to be "Alright you get this *waves arms* chunk of land. It is yours to do with as you see fit. When you eventually die it will go back to the community." This says nothing about buying and selling. The "you" in this statement could be a whole series of owners as it changes hands again and again. The only absolute is that when the current owner of the land dies, it defaults back to the government.

 

[Skjadir]

[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Scaling labour payment (???)
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)

 

[notgreat]

I really like the quota+proportional system. Its main difficulty is in the math administration department, which is something that I think we can advance and it's not too hard to explain to people. More importantly, it means that everyone is still ok during times of famine: quota means that farmers get screwed horribly in times of famine (since they'll have nothing left for themselves), while proportional means that non-farmers get screwed during famines (since we won't be able to collect enough for everyone).

On the other hand, the scaling labour payment is both more complicated and less useful. It is useful and I'd gladly take it if we had the supporting infrastructure, but I don't think we can afford to spend the turns required to make everything work out nicely. It's hard to evaluate what communal resources everyone is using and what those should be valued at. Making it a flat fee is massively simpler, and more apparently fair (everyone pays the same) since most professions will use about the same amount of resources. If someone invents a new profession, the taxers don't need to have a long discussion about how much resources it uses, they just apply the flat "hard to evaluate" fee and it's done.

 

[Sightsear]

On the other hand, the scaling labour payment is both more complicated and less useful. It is useful and we'd use it if we had the supporting infrastructure, but I don't think we can afford to spend the turns required to make everything work out nicely. It's hard to evaluate what communal resources everyone is using and what those should be valued at. Making it a flat fee is massively simpler, and more apparently fair (everyone pays) since most professions will use about the same amount of resources. If someone invents a new profession, the taxers don't need to have a long discussion about how much resources it uses, they just apply the flat "hard to evaluate" fee and it's done.

Click to shrink...

Sold!

[X] Flat labour payment

3112 I did just do a whole spiel about not getting ahead of ourselves.

 

[Rozencrantz]

[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Scaling labour payment (???)
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)