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Paths of Civilization

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ctulhuslp said:
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?
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I like this analysis. Not sure I agree with everything so I'm gonna tease this apart as I do my own. Hey, it even might end up that I do agree!

*dives in*

OK! Quota + Fractional/Scaling labour payment/Communal ownership, leadership assigned. is the current leader.

First bit, Quota + Fractional. I like the look you give it as 'everybody pays out some minimal amount of resources and pays a small part of everything above'. This seems to me what it does too. The nice part of the combo is that the Quota threshold is lower than in a pure Quota choice so the folks who can only make less are not as threatened by the Quota. Yep, Quota's are from what I understand would be created by assessors who determine how much a land can produce and then spit out the threshold number. But with Q+F that threshold would be lower and easier to cope with. Plus fractional hits the lower income folks, like our frequent migrants, much much less harder than folks who are richer by our standards.

Second bit, Scaling payments. Considering what AN said in his clarification of Flat vs Scaling it seems that it does not threaten masons and others to horribly. They will take a hit.
Of note is that in both variations it seems farmers or other easily taxed professions get asked more. Whoops read that wrong, so actually, craftsmen and others who are not farmers will actually get hit extra hard with either option. The scaling looks like it would hit the richer craftsmen and they would be incentivized to sell their stuff and not create new innovative stuff. Though by selling their stuff the rest of the People benefit from these luxuries and might get curious on how to make them. From the other end it provides a flexible barrier to the expansion of the less rich crafters. Not really good. But it grinds away at our slowly growing noble class. And a noble class is probably what would end up killing us as they funnel resources their way instead of where they are actually needed for us to continue growing. @veekie re-considering the Flat payment based off of what AN said here might be a good idea. I'm kinda wobbling on it.

I mean a Flat payment would be good for slowing down the growth of a noble class too. But less so than a scaling payment since it is more skewed towards putting pressure on the lower classes. It's also rather... finicky to get right because how do you make it a stopper for the rich with out gutting the poor? Hmmmm...

Edit 2: Continuing my analysis let's look at, like you did, how the first and second interact. With Scaling I can see where the issues of suppressing innovation come in. (I actually find it funny that we worry about this so much but we are still one of the most advanced peoples in the region, hehe). Anyway the suppressing... Yeah it will hurt our bureaucrats. They will not be happy people. But scaling holds of the not hurting the rich while gutting the poor problem.

A flat rate would be innovation neutral I think when coupled with Q+F so that's a good in it's favor. But *points up to finicky fiddly bits* It will still be difficult for our Bureaucrats to get right. Plus, another consideration. Do you have the same flat rate in a drought as you do plenty? I would think not since that is suicide. With Scaling it might be more "fire and forget", once they get it they won't really need to change it because it is based on what you have right now. I think this gives Scaling some drought and crop disease buffer zones not available to Flat. Hmmm...

Edit the 3: Ok onto the third piece. I don't completely agree with your look at communal inheritance leadership assigned. Main point I don't agree with is that it disincentives innovation. I think looking at our progress in this field it actually incentivizes it. *Points to terra preta and terraces*. Not sure about it straining the apparatus, because it is something we have been doing for a while. It might be tough with the other two or it might provide a sanity preserving anchor point.

VoidZero said:
@Academia Nut

Are our people currently using barter system for their foreign trades or currency equivalent? Like gold, gem, or dyed textile?
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I think we are doing a general valuables barter. So we use all of those things, but they are directly used to get other things of value like food, and are not being used as a currency to represent other things. They are their own worth basically?

Edit: Oh oops I didn't finish my analysis. Hold on let me put that in there.
 
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[X] Quota
[X] Flat labour payment
[X] Private ownership, communal inheritance (+1 Stability)

No time right now to give a big detailed post, but we want to avoid disincentivizing skilled workers doing works. We need to push past farmers.
 
[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Flat labour payment
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)

Compromise, which does go easier on artisans than bandwagon, easing administrative workload too.
 
ctulhuslp said:
[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Flat labour payment
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)

Compromise, which does go easier on artisans than bandwagon, easing administrative workload too.
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Take a look at my post where I look at your analysis. I made some edits because I realized I wasn't done. Derp :V
Looking at it I actually think I'm not done. Hmmm...

I'm kinda really in the middle about the Scaling vs Flat.
 
At this time period i don't agree with options focused on gutting wealthier group of population. We know they would eventually bloat to encompass the entire society, but at this point in time they are the only extra source of thinkers beside shamans.

Government doesn't count as their job is to regulate and manage population and defense.

For those suggesting "rich" farmers sprouting intellectual like China, their government actually give land ownership and regular food/clothing grants for those passed basic local exams. And the only way for exam takers to study successfully, is for the entire family or extended family group to fund education.

In short, education is freaking expansive and only wealthy families can support it. Gutting wealthy people will more likely make everyone average at best and poorer at worest.

Time stops for no one, stable and lack of drive will lose the marathon.
 
BungieONI said:
Hmm!


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.


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.


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.


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.
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We were told in the update that the problem still exists, and the situation is actively deteriorating as the bad apples create a vicious cycle.

A bully can bully people around in any system, and therefore every system has checks on that. The problem in the current system is that the leaders assigning land aren't actually abusing their authority when they play the game. They have the official authority to assign land in whatever way is best, as judged by them. The tenants don't have any rights to the land and the leaders don't actually, officially have to justify their decisions in the same way they would if they just arbitrarily took rations from one person and gave them to another. At the very least, needing to work harder and longer while sticking their neck out further to indirectly pressure their victims instead of simply saying, "that plot is theirs now because I say so", puts them at greater risk of committing an actionable violation- a violation of a specific somebody's explicit right- and thus disincentivizes it. We may know about this problem, but the whole reason we're having this vote is to work out a solution because there isn't one already.

It's hard to imagine anybody actually arguing for a system of property musical chairs. What it sounds like is life estate with alienation, to which waste can most definitely be contested by the community of inheritors even if the government didn't have regulatory authority to begin with.
 
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BungieONI said:
I'm kinda really in the middle about the Scaling vs Flat.
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Flat is also a rather injust taxing system, which always leads to problems as it allows an easy accumulation of wealth and will do so especially for us whose society centers around Communal property and justice

If you really choose this you can expect it to backfire in our faces within a few generations, especially if we take a Stab loss and go below 0
 
I'm gonna abstain from this one, because it is far too much of a clusterfuck for me to understand
 
Lailoken said:
We were told in the update that the problem still exists, and the situation is actively deteriorating as the bad apples create a vicious cycle.
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If you really want to solve the problem at it's 'root' then it not the system itself that you need to fight, but the reason why people do not follow the system

As @veekie pointed out, the failure of the system comes from the unchecked corruption becoming the new tradition

Another point, left unmentioned by him are the refugees that we take in,

AN even stated that they are half the reason and it plays into the Con of LoO, after all the refugees come with new/foreign idea to us, which is not always a good thing and in this case a bad things that became a real problem as their backwater social concepts about property and the generell mood of uncertainity of the population(due us being permanently below 1 Stab) clash with our culture, which results in a loss of confidence in our ways, traditions and government by our very own people, which in turn lead to corruption and abuse of the system

If we really want to stop this I think we need to raise our Stability back into the positv and keep it there, maybe even keep some refugees out, until people grow confident in the ways our civ again and stop abusing the system because they either see no need/sense in it or it becomes inproper
 
VoidZero said:
Are our people currently using barter system for their foreign trades or currency equivalent? Like gold, gem, or dyed textile?
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Sort of? It's sort of half-barter, half-mutual-gift-giving. Like, outside the People, the traders show up at some other village and have all sorts of things they're willing to exchange, and there will be haggling, but a good portion of it is also "Oh, we present to you this fine gift of dyes" with the unspoken but understood message that they expect a gift back in return, and that if one is not received, or if it is not big enough, then maybe next time the traders swing by they won't have a gift, or at least as not as nice as one. As for currency, the closest is the dye itself since it can be apportioned out in small amounts, with some of the precious metals also starting to get into that "easily carried and divided" area.
 
ctulhuslp said:
[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Flat labour payment
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)

Compromise, which does go easier on artisans than bandwagon, easing administrative workload too.
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Ok my analysis of your analysis is complete.

sidestory said:
This will put a greater disadvantage towards farming, which will make it less attractive and so cause a decline, as people take up other, more lucrative professions, probably resulting in an mid term econ-quantity and long term econ-quality loss for our civ
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How so? Can you outline your thoughts in this direction?

Lailoken said:
We were told in the update that the problem still exists, and the situation is actively deteriorating as the bad apples create a vicious cycle.

A bully can bully people around in any system, and therefore every system has checks on that. The problem in the current system is that the leaders assigning land aren't actually abusing their authority when they play the game. They have the official authority to assign land in whatever way is best, as judged by them. The tenants don't have any rights to the land and the leaders don't actually, officially have to justify their decisions in the same way they would if they just arbitrarily took rations from one person and gave them to another. At the very least, needing to work harder and longer while sticking their neck out further to indirectly pressure their victims instead of simply saying, "that plot is theirs now because I say so", puts them at greater risk of committing an actionable violation- a violation of a specific somebody's explicit right- and thus disincentivizes it. We may know about this problem, but the whole reason we're having this vote is to work out a solution because there isn't one already.

It's hard to imagine anybody actually arguing for a system of property musical chairs. What it sounds like is life estate with alienation, to which waste can most definitely be contested by the community of inheritors even if the government didn't have regulatory authority to begin with.
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Hmm. I'm not sure if I can convince you otherwise after saying my piece. *desire to drop discussion/argument increasing*

I did not really see an indication that the problem is active right now in the update. I may have forgotten over night. Can you find me the quote from it that is making you think this?

As to the private vs communal. I see that the chiefs are abusing their authority when they pull the last hit bullarky. The spirit of their authority is thus to me "A chief of a village/province is obligated to assign their people to plots of land, and ensure they are productive. A chief is to fairly evaluate the yeilds of such assignments and determine if a move is required." Basically by having it in the current form the sin of unfairness that can trigger our Protective Justice is out in the open.

In Private the way I see corruption happening is in back room dealing. A hypothetical: The Corrupt Chief A wants to give his friend B a nice plot of land owned by C. Chief A invites Landowner C to dinner at their lodge. Chief A makes subtle overtures about C selling to Friend B. Landowner C polietly refuses. Chief A is briefly thwarted and nothing directly illegal has taken place. Chief A begins to think and sets out to find ways to punish and pressure Landowner C until they cave. Maybe by initially social ostriczation, Chief A does not buy and uses no products from Landowner C. Chief A encourages his friends B, D, E and F to not do so to. And that is the start. My overall point is that it would make our corruption insidious. Several degrees of separation more than it currently is. And since it is not in the open and has basically been reduced to a quiet war that Protective Justice will have trouble proccing on.

sidestory said:
If you really want to solve the problem at it's 'root' then it not the system itself that you need to fight, but the reason why people do not follow the system

As @veekie pointed out, the failure of the system comes from the unchecked corruption becoming the new tradition

Another point, left unmentioned by him are the refugees that we take in,

AN even stated that they are half the reason and it plays into the Con of LoO, after all the refugees come with new/foreign idea to us, which is not always a good thing and in this case a bad things that became a real problem as their backwater social concepts about property and the generell mood of uncertainity of the population(due us being permanently below 1 Stab) clash with our culture, which results in a loss of confidence in our ways, traditions and government by our very own people, which in turn lead to corruption and abuse of the system

If we really want to stop this I think we need to raise our Stability back into the positv and keep it there, maybe even keep some refugees out, until people grow confident in the ways our civ again and stop abusing the system because they either see no need/sense in it or it becomes inproper
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I am so for pushing our stability to 1 and especially 2 and keeping the damn thing there. It's why I want to vote for something that does either:
Main Grand Sacrifice
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Chariots
Which takes -5ish Econ. And gets us to 2 Stability.

Or

Main War Mission
Secondary Chariots
Secondary Festival
Which takes -4ish Econ. Gets us to 1 Stability. And since a Main War Mission damages enemy Martial, Diplo, and Econ that Econ the enemy losses has to go somewhere. So we might gain it. The Nomads were certainly getting Econ from beating on us. Plus the Mission might force innovation in chariot use.

I would also go for

Main Chariots
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Festival

Which takes -5ish Econ. Gets us to 1 Stability. The Chariots and possible(or was it certain?) innovation will be really nice plus it might drive away the Nomads without a Main War Mission.
Adhoc vote count started by BungieONI on Apr 25, 2017 at 5:00 PM, finished with 22382 posts and 73 votes.
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tally
Adhoc vote count started by minerva-n-memes on Apr 25, 2017 at 5:01 PM, finished with 22382 posts and 73 votes.
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notgreat said:
This has my support if we're not mired in problems from the new tax systems. If we are, dealing with that is the top priority IMO.
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I'd go for it if we have econ of 6 or 7. Probably 7. Not really safe otherwise.

Plus, what do you think of the idea of a Main War Mission potentially gaining us Econ. I know we don't do the slaving thing, thank the Land and Crow, but we might get food and other resources. I wonder if we might get reduced amounts of Econ compared to everyone else, if at all?
 
Trying to wrap my head around those options made my head hurt, but I think the current winning vote is fine. Those ??? make me nervous though...

[X] Quota + Fractional (???)
[X] Scaling labour payment (???)
[X] Communal ownership, leadership assigned (Status quo)
 
Not that I'm expecting it to change any minds, but it should be noted that our constant intake of immigrants means that our social values are not massively propagated to our entire civilization, and that private ownership would see this problem exasperated to a very high degree since people will lack government oversight.

Really, the only reason that we have it being asked for on a regular basis is that all of our neighbors have it and thus our immigrant influx is used to the system. It does not favor what our government seeks to achieve by many miles.

BungieONI said:
I'd go for it if we have econ of 6 or 7. Probably 7. Not really safe otherwise.

Plus, what do you think of the idea of a Main War Mission potentially gaining us Econ. I know we don't do the slaving thing, thank the Land and Crow, but we might get food and other resources. I wonder if we might get reduced amounts of Econ compared to everyone else, if at all?
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Yeah, main chariots and secondary festival are only safe at 6 Econ, which we should have.

We'd probably get cows and such for successfully raiding the nomads.

Edit: That said, I'm in favor of main war myself, for afore mentioned reasons.
 
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BungieONI said:
I'd go for it if we have econ of 6 or 7. Probably 7. Not really safe otherwise.

Plus, what do you think of the idea of a Main War Mission potentially gaining us Econ. I know we don't do the slaving thing, thank the Land and Crow, but we might get food and other resources. I wonder if we might get reduced amounts of Econ compared to everyone else, if at all?
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I wouldn't bet on gaining econ from war mission towards nomadic raiders.
Lack of slave, land, or holding doesn't help with cost recovery.

Maybe hand full of gem and metal with small herd of animals? Of course the captured nomada will need to be integrated if we want to stay on the kind side.

All in all, net econ lost but maybe gains in other areas.
 
The devil is in the details. Scaling and proportion may sound nice, but assessment is hard. It's not just the administrative workload, it's the opaque and arbitrary opportunity for abuse. I'm not sure how to des- y'know, I just read something a little while back which covers this better than I can:

Article:
II.

Suppose you're a premodern king, maybe one of the Louises who ruled France in the Middle Ages. You want to tax people to raise money for a Crusade or something. Practically everyone in your kingdom is a peasant, and all the peasants produce is grain, so you'll tax them in grain. Shouldn't be too hard, right? You'll just measure how many pints of grain everyone produces, and...

The pint in eighteenth-century Paris was equivalent to 0.93 liters, whereas in Seine-en-Montane it was 1.99 liters and in Precy-sous-Thil, an astounding 3.33 liters. The aune, a measure of length used for cloth, varied depending on the material(the unit for silk, for instance, was smaller than that for linen) and across France there were at least seventeen different aunes.​

Okay, this is stupid. Just give everybody evenly-sized baskets, and tell them that baskets are the new unit of measurement.
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Virtually everywhere in early modern Europe were endless micropolitics about how baskets might be adjusted through wear, bulging, tricks of weaving, moisture, the thickness of the rim, and so on. In some areas the local standards for the bushel and other units of measurement were kept in metallic form and placed in the care of a trusted official or else literally carved into the stone of a church or the town hall. Nor did it end there. How the grain was to be poured (from shoulder height, which packed it somewhat, or from waist height?), how damp it could be, whether the container could be shaken down, and finally, if and how it was to be leveled off when full were subjects of long and bitter controversy.​

Huh, this medieval king business is harder than you thought. Maybe you can just leave this problem to the feudal lords?

Thus far, this account of local measurement practices risks giving the impression that, although local conceptions of distance, area, volume, and so on were different from and more varied than the unitary abstract standards a state might favor, they were nevertheless aiming at objective accuracy. This impression would be false. […]
​
A good part of the politics of measurement sprang from what a contemporary economist might call the "stickiness" of feudal rents. Noble and clerical claimants often found it difficult to increase feudal dues directly; the levels set for various charges were the result of long struggle, and even a small increase above the customary level was viewed as a threatening breach of tradition. Adjusting the measure, however, represented a roundabout way of achieving the same end.

The local lord might, for example, lend grain to peasants in smaller baskets and insist on repayment in larger baskets. He might surreptitiously or even boldly enlarge the size of the grain sacks accepted for milling (a monopoly of the domain lord) and reduce the size of the sacks used for measuring out flour; he might also collect feudal dues in larger baskets and pay wages in kind in smaller baskets. While the formal custom governing feudal dues and wages would thus remain intact (requiring, for example, the same number of sacks of wheat from the harvest of a given holding), the actual transaction might increasingly favor the lord. The results of such fiddling were far from trivial. Kula estimates that the size of the bushel (boisseau) used to collect the main feudal rent (taille) increased by one-third between 1674 and 1716 as part of what was called the reaction feodale.​

Okay, but nobody's going to make too big a deal about this, right?
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This sense of victimization [over changing units of measure] was evident in the cahiers of grievances prepared for the meeting of the Estates General just before the Revolution. […] In an unprecedented revolutionary context where an entirely new political system was being created from first principles, it was surely no great matter to legislate uniform weights and measures. As the revolutionary decree read "The centuries old dream of the masses of only one just measure has come true! The Revolution has given the people the meter!"
Okay, so apparently (you think to yourself as you are being led to the guillotine), it was a big deal after all.​

Maybe you shouldn't have taxed grain. Maybe you should tax land. After all, it's the land that grows the grain. Just figure out how much land everybody owns, and you can calculate some kind of appropriate tax from there.

So, uh, peasant villagers, how much land does each of you own?
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A hypothetical case of customary land tenure practices may help demonstrate how difficult it is to assimilate such practices to the barebones scheme of a modern cadastral map [land survey suitable for tax assessment][…]

Let us imagine a community in which families have usufruct rights to parcels of cropland during the main growing season. Only certain crops, however, may be planted, and every seven years the usufruct land is distributed among resident families according to each family's size and its number of able-bodied adults. After the harvest of the main-season crop, all cropland reverts to common land where any family may glean, graze their fowl and livestock, and even plant quickly maturing, dry-season crops. Rights to graze fowl and livestock on pasture-land held in common by the village is extended to all local families, but the number of animals that can be grazed is restricted according to family size, especially in dry years when forage is scarce. Families not using their grazing rights can give them to other villagers but not to outsiders. Everyone has the right to gather firewood for normal family needs, and the village blacksmith and baker are given larger allotments. No commercial sale from village woodlands is permitted.

Trees that have been planted and any fruit they may bear are the property of the family who planted them, no matter where they are now growing. Fruit fallen from such tree, however, is the property of anyone who gathers it. When a family fells one of its trees or a tree is felled by a storm, the trunk belongs to the family, the branches to the immediate neighbors, and the "tops" (leaves and twigs) to any poorer villager who carries them off. Land is set aside for use or leasing out by widows with children and dependents of conscripted males. Usufruct rights to land and trees may be let to anyone in the village; the only time they may be let to someone outside the village is if no one in the community wishes to claim them. After a crop failure leading to a food shortage, many of these arrangements are readjusted.​

You know what? I'm just going to put you all down as owning ten. Ten land. Everyone okay with that? Cool. Let's say ten land for everyone and just move on to the next village.
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Novoselok village had a varied economy of cultivation, grazing, and forestry…the complex welter of strips was designed to ensure that each village household received a strip of land in every ecological zone. An individual household might have as many as ten to fifteen different plots constituting something of a representative sample of the village's ecological zones and microclimates. The distribution spread a family's risks prudently, and from time to time the land was reshuffled as families grew or shrunk…The strips of land were generally straight and parallel so that a readjustment could be made by moving small stakes along just one side of a field, without having to think of areal dimensions. Where the other side of the field was not parallel, the stakes could be shifted to compensate for the fact that the strip lay toward the narrower or wider end of the field. Irregular fields were divided, not according to area, but according to yield.​

…huh. Maybe this isn't going to work. Let's try it the other way around. Instead of mapping land, we can just get a list with the name of everyone in the village, and go from there.
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Only wealthy aristocrats tended to have fixed surnames…Imagine the dilemma of a tithe or capitation-tax collector [in England] faced with a male population, 90% of whom bore just six Christian names (John, William, Thomas, Robert, Richard, and Henry).​

Okay, fine. That won't work either. Surely there's something else we can do to assess a tax burden on each estate. Think outside the box, scrape the bottom of the barrel!
​
The door-and-window tax established in France [in the 18th century] is a striking case in point. Its originator must have reasoned that the number of windows and doors in a dwelling was proportional to the dwelling's size. Thus a tax assessor need not enter the house or measure it, but merely count the doors and windows.

As a simple, workable formula, it was a brilliant stroke, but it was not without consequences. Peasant dwellings were subsequently designed or renovated with the formula in mind so as to have as few openings as possible. While the fiscal losses could be recouped by raising the tax per opening, the long-term effects on the health of the population lasted for more than a century.​

Close enough.

III.

The moral of the story is: premodern states had very limited ability to tax their citizens effectively. Along with the problems mentioned above – nonstandardized measurement, nonstandardized property rights, nonstandardized personal names – we can add a few others. At this point national languages were a cruel fiction; local "dialects" could be as different from one another as eg Spanish is from Portuguese, so villagers might not even be able to understand the tax collectors. Worst of all, there was no such thing as a census in France until the 17th century, so there wasn't even a good idea of how many people or villages there were.

Kings usually solved this problem by leaving the tax collection up to local lords, who presumably knew the idiosyncracies of their own domains. But one step wasn't always enough. If the King only knew Dukes, and the Dukes only knew Barons, and the Barons only knew village headmen, and it was only the village headmen who actually knew anything about the peasants, then you needed a four-step chain to get any taxes. Each link in the chain had an incentive to collect as much as they could and give up as little as they could get away with. So on the one end, the peasants were paying backbreaking punitive taxes. And on the other, the Royal Treasurer was handing the King half a loaf of moldy bread and saying "Here you go, Sire, apparently this is all the grain in France."

So from the beginning, kings had an incentive to make the country "legible" – that is, so organized and well-indexed that it was easy to know everything about everyone and collect/double-check taxes. Also from the beginning, nobles had an incentive to frustrate the kings so that they wouldn't be out of a job. And commoners, who figured that anything which made it easier for the State to tax them and interfere in their affairs was bad news, usually resisted too.

Scott doesn't bring this up, but it's interesting reading this in the context of Biblical history. It would seem that whoever wrote the Bible was not a big fan of censuses. From 1 Chronicles 21:
​
Satan rose up against Israel and caused David to take a census of the people of Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, "Take a census of all the people of Israel—from Beersheba in the south to Dan in the north—and bring me a report so I may know how many there are."

But Joab replied, "May the Lord increase the number of his people a hundred times over! But why, my lord the king, do you want to do this? Are they not all your servants? Why must you cause Israel to sin?"

But the king insisted that they take the census, so Joab traveled throughout all Israel to count the people. Then he returned to Jerusalem and reported the number of people to David. There were 1,100,000 warriors in all Israel who could handle a sword, and 470,000 in Judah. But Joab did not include the tribes of Levi and Benjamin in the census because he was so distressed at what the king had made him do.

God was very displeased with the census, and he punished Israel for it. Then David said to God, "I have sinned greatly by taking this census. Please forgive my guilt for doing this foolish thing." Then the Lord spoke to Gad, David's seer. This was the message: "Go and say to David, 'This is what the Lord says: I will give you three choices. Choose one of these punishments, and I will inflict it on you.'"

So Gad came to David and said, "These are the choices the Lord has given you. You may choose three years of famine, three months of destruction by the sword of your enemies, or three days of severe plague as the angel of the Lord brings devastation throughout the land of Israel. Decide what answer I should give the Lord who sent me."

"I'm in a desperate situation!" David replied to Gad. "But let me fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is very great. Do not let me fall into human hands."
So the Lord sent a plague upon Israel, and 70,000 people died as a result.​

(related: Scott examined some of the same data about Holocaust survival rates as Eichmann In Jerusalem, but made them make a lot more sense: the greater the legibility of the state, the worse for the Jews. One reason Jewish survival in the Netherlands was so low was because the Netherlands had a very accurate census of how many Jews there were and where they lived; sometimes officials saved Jews by literally burning census records).

Centralized government projects promoting legibility have always been a two-steps-forward, one-step back sort of thing. The government very gradually expands its reach near the capital where its power is strongest, to peasants whom it knows will try to thwart it as soon as its back is turned, and then if its decrees survive it pushes outward toward the hinterlands.

Scott describes the spread of surnames. Peasants didn't like permanent surnames. Their own system was quite reasonable for them: John the baker was John Baker, John the blacksmith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Underhill, John who was really short was John Short. The same person might be John Smith and John Underhill in different contexts, where his status as a blacksmith or place of origin was more important.

But the government insisted on giving everyone a single permanent name, unique for the village, and tracking who was in the same family as whom. Resistance was intense:​

What evidence we have suggests that second names of any kind became rare as distance from the state's fiscal reach increased. Whereas one-third of the households in Florence declared a second name, the proportion dropped to one-fifth for secondary towns and to one-tenth in the countryside. It was not until the seventeenth century that family names crystallized in the most remote and poorest areas of Tuscany – the areas that would have had the least contact with officialdom.[…]

State naming practices, like state mapping practices, were inevitably associated with taxes (labor, military service, grain, revenue) and hence aroused popular resistance. The great English peasant rising of 1381 (often called the Wat Tyler Rebellion) is attributed to an unprecedented decade of registration and assessments of poll taxes. For English as well as for Tuscan peasants, a census of all adult males could not but appear ominous, if not ruinous.​

The same issues repeated themselves a few hundred years later when Europe started colonizing other continents. Again they encountered a population with naming systems they found unclear and unsuitable to taxation. But since colonial states had more control over their subjects than the relatively weak feudal monarchies of the Middle Ages, they were able to deal with it in one fell swoop, sometimes comically so:
​
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the Philippines under the Spanish. Filipinos were instructed by the decree of November 21, 1849 to take on permanent Hispanic surnames.[…]

Each local official was to be given a supply of surnames sufficient for his jurisdiction, "taking care that the distribution be made by letters of the alphabet." In practice, each town was given a number of pages from the alphabetized [catalog], producing whole towns with surnames beginning with the same letter. In situations where there has been little in-migration in the past 150 years, the traces of this administrative exercise are still perfectly visible across the landscape. "For example, in the Bikol region, the entire alphabet is laid out like a garland over the provinces of Albay, Sorsogon, and Catanduanes which in 1849 belonged to the single jurisdiction of Albay. Beginning with A at the provincial capital, the letters B and C mark the towns along the cost beyond Tabaco to Wiki. We return and trace along the coast of Sorosgon the letters E to L, then starting down the Iraya Valley at Daraga with M, we stop with S to Polangui and Libon, and finish the alphabet with a quick tour around the island of Catanduas.

The confusion for which the decree is the antidote is largely that of the administrator and the tax collector. Universal last names, they believe, will facilitate the administration of justice, finance, and public order as well as make it simpler for prospective marriage partners to calculate their degree of consanguinity. For a utilitarian state builder of [Governor] Claveria's temper, however, the ultimate goal was a complete and legible list of subjects and taxpayers.​

This was actually a lot less cute and funny than the alphabetization makes it sound:
​
What if the Filipinos chose to ignore their new last names? This possibility had already crossed Claveria's mind, and he took steps to make sure that the names would stick. Schoolteachers were ordered to forbid their students to address or even know one another by any name except the officially inscribed family name. Those teachers who did not apply the rule with enthusiasm were to be punished. More efficacious perhaps, given the minuscule school enrollment, was the proviso that forbade priests and military and civil officials from accepting any document, application, petition, or deed that did not use the official surnames. All documents using other names would be null and void​

Similar provisions ensured the replacement of local dialects with the approved national language. Students were only allowed to learn the national language in school and were punished for speaking in vernacular. All formal documents had to be in the national language, which meant that peasants who had formally been able to manage their own legal affairs had to rely on national-language-speaking intermediaries. Scott talks about the effect in France:
​
One can hardly imagine a more effective formula for immediately devaluing local knowledge and privileging all those who had mastered the official linguistic code. It was a gigantic shift in power. Those at the periphery who lacked competence in French were rendered mute and marginal. They were now in need of a local guide to the new state culture, which appeared in the form of lawyers, notaries, schoolteachers, clerks, and soldiers.​

These are huge changes being talked about by a neolithic people who are inventing them right up from the conceptual level. Going full (???) has real potential to backfire catastrophically.



sidestory said:
Flat is also a rather injust taxing system, which always leads to problems as it allows an easy accumulation of wealth and will do so especially for us whose society centers around Communal property and justice

If you really choose this you can expect it to backfire in our faces within a few generations, especially if we take a Stab loss and go below 0
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-which is why the 100% estate tax of communal inheritance is important. Accumulation of wealth is only really an issue when it accumulates over generations.



BungieONI said:
Ok my analysis of your analysis is complete.


How so? Can you outline your thoughts in this direction?


Hmm. I'm not sure if I can convince you otherwise after saying my piece. *desire to drop discussion/argument increasing*

I did not really see an indication that the problem is active right now in the update. I may have forgotten over night. Can you find me the quote from it that is making you think this?

As to the private vs communal. I see that the chiefs are abusing their authority when they pull the last hit bullarky. The spirit of their authority is thus to me "A chief of a village/province is obligated to assign their people to plots of land, and ensure they are productive. A chief is to fairly evaluate the yeilds of such assignments and determine if a move is required." Basically by having it in the current form the sin of unfairness that can trigger our Protective Justice is out in the open.

In Private the way I see corruption happening is in back room dealing. A hypothetical: The Corrupt Chief A wants to give his friend B a nice plot of land owned by C. Chief A invites Landowner C to dinner at their lodge. Chief A makes subtle overtures about C selling to Friend B. Landowner C polietly refuses. Chief A is briefly thwarted and nothing directly illegal has taken place. Chief A begins to think and sets out to find ways to punish and pressure Landowner C until they cave. Maybe by initially social ostriczation, Chief A does not buy and uses no products from Landowner C. Chief A encourages his friends B, D, E and F to not do so to. And that is the start. My overall point is that it would make our corruption insidious. Several degrees of separation more than it currently is. And since it is not in the open and has basically been reduced to a quiet war that Protective Justice will have trouble proccing on.


I am so for pushing our stability to 1 and especially 2 and keeping the damn thing there. It's why I want to vote for something that does either:
Main Grand Sacrifice
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Chariots
Which takes -5ish Econ. And gets us to 2 Stability.

Or

Main War Mission
Secondary Chariots
Secondary Festival
Which takes -4ish Econ. Gets us to 1 Stability. And since a Main War Mission damages enemy Martial, Diplo, and Econ that Econ the enemy losses has to go somewhere. So we might gain it. The Nomads were certainly getting Econ from beating on us. Plus the Mission might force innovation in chariot use.

I would also go for

Main Chariots
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Festival

Which takes -5ish Econ. Gets us to 1 Stability. The Chariots and possible(or was it certain?) innovation will be really nice plus it might drive away the Nomads without a Main War Mission.
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Academia Nut said:
On and on it went. Most things worked, but worked because everyone was cooperating and once someone fell outside that due to malice, incompetence, or simple confusion the system started to break down. The rest of the People would often eventually nudge things back into order, but every time newcomers were added the problems got just a little bit worse as not everyone got along, more petty rivalries between families got spawned with new outsiders to use as ways of getting at their rivals, and the memories of how to do things properly got diluted. The shamans and those who could read could retain some knowledge, but they were often at a similar distance to the village and provincial chiefs for how things got actually implemented, and could only confirm that their tallies added up, not that the numbers they got had been achieved fairly.
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The chiefs are abusing the spirit of their authority, but they're not actually breaking any hard rule. Making corruption work hard and take risks to be insidious is preferable to leaving it perfectly legal and countered only by the honor system.
 
BungieONI said:
How so? Can you outline your thoughts in this direction?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Simple farmers pay more taxes then Artists -> Artists have an easier way to aquire wealth -> society notices -> Artists become more attractive, the same as Warriors once were in our society,
As more people choose to become Artists less become farmers -> leads to a mid terms loss of econ-quantity as the current generation of farmers has to compensate the suddly drop of farming recruits -> results in either a higher tax or more work for farmers as they have to compensate the sudden loss of productivity and still meet the demands (as in they still need to feed our civ, only now they need to give up even more food as there are suddenly fewer farmers to drwa upon while the food demand of our civ stayed the same)-> farming becomes less attractive -> farmers compensate the loss of quantity by streching themselve thinner -> results in a long term loss of quality

BungieONI said:
Main Grand Sacrifice
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Chariots
Which takes -5ish Econ. And gets us to 2 Stability.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I actually expect a Stab drop from the current vote as it results in a complet redo the tax system without giving the people their pet project
therefore I plan for a Main [Restore Order] turn with Sec War mission and sec Festival
 
Lailoken said:
The devil is in the details. Scaling and proportion may sound nice, but assessment is hard. It's not just the administrative workload, it's the opaque and arbitrary opportunity for abuse. I'm not sure how to des- y'know, I just read something a little while back which covers this better than I can:
Click to expand...
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Yes it's hard, but it's also fair and that is the point, we are a society where fairness goes to the point where it is a must-have, if something is injust or a deal is not fair our people will not accept that

And our current choices should be done in consideration of that
We have
1. done nothing, will anger the people, because why raise the issue and take focus away from the war with the nomads if you do nothing with it
2. flat taxes - easy way to aquire personal wealth for people who work in the system, bad for our society
3. diffrent taxes, not fair -> blows in our faces as justice must be met
4. complex taxes: takes a lot Administrative power, but is fair and prevent the easy aquiration of wealth thus the only acceptable choice

Lailoken said:
-which is why the 100% estate tax of communal inheritance is important. Accumulation of wealth is only really an issue when it accumulates over generations.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And here is te thing, that is not an option, only land inheritance is a thing, but using the land you can easily aquire other kinds of wealth, which allow quite easily the very thing you wish to prevent
 
sidestory said:
Simple farmers pay more taxes then Artists -> Artists have an easier way to aquire wealth -> society notices -> Artists become more attractive, the same as Warriors once were in our society,
As more people choose to become Artists less become farmers -> leads to a mid terms loss of econ-quantity as the current generation of farmers has to compensate the suddly drop of farming recruits -> results in either a higher tax or more work for farmers as they have to compensate the sudden loss of productivity and still meet the demands (as in they still need to feed our civ, only now they need to give up even more food as there are suddenly fewer farmers to drwa upon while the food demand of our civ stayed the same)-> farming becomes less attractive -> farmers compensate the loss of quantity by streching themselve thinner -> results in a long term loss of quality



I actually expect a Stab drop from the current vote as it results in a complet redo the tax system without giving the people their pet project
therefore I plan for a Main [Restore Order] turn with Sec War mission and sec Festival
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Actually if you read AN's post here it says that "If you aren't a farmer" you have to pay/do more. Farmers are not being hit with extra more than Artists as far as my reading can see.

I commend your paranoia. I to expect a Stability drop. Though I hadn't, stupidly, internalized the drop that is coming from this current decision. That does look really good. Maining Grand Sacrifice and a Sec Festival with a sec War Mission would get us to 2 Stability for -4ish Econ with out the risk of ending up at 0 Stability with Restore Order.
 
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