Types of Governments (Little Upsilon)

There was a suggestion, number 85 exclusive, that said that there should be senators, judges, and a president. I wondered if Simcountry could have different kinds of governments available. Each one has it's own strengths and weaknesses. It's probably an awful idea, and the specifics I've laid out are probably worse, but here goes.

In an Anarchy, the federal government doesn't provide schools, hospitals, roads, railroads, offense, defense, or strategic forces; it doesn't tax; trade, or create corporations; it doesn't exist. Instead, the cities of a country build their schools, roads, railroads, offense, defense, and strategic forces; they tax, trade, and create corporations; and they can confederate their offense, defense, and strategic forces. But if one city doesn't wish to participate in a war, they may take their forces out. They also have to confederate to build road and railroad networks so that transportation keeps going smoothly. So if a city shuts other cities out of their network, then the transportation index takes a hit, so no doing bad wars. The player leads the confederation to war, and manages the defenses. The player may use city contributions to the confederation to create corporations and manage them.

In an Aristocracy, the hit to welfare for having less healthcare, employment, education, defense, and social security is less, but the general cost of government will go up. Citizen income tax depends on how well the Aristocrats invest in the stock market, but will be less if there is little defense. There are less contributions to healthcare, social security, or education. Aristocrats will automatically invest government money in the stock market. They will contribute money if you are in a war. You cannot tax corporations.

In a Communist State, there are no private corporations, everyone is paid the same, and the hit to welfare for having less healthcare, employment, education, and social security is more. If those indexes, and other values like home value(if that even means anything economically in this game), are not extremely high, high techies, executives, high level managers, high level workers, and university teachers will be reduced (or at least not allow themselves to be employed. I dunno the population/employment mechanics). You will probably have no shortages of low and medium level workers, nurses, doctors, teachers, and low and medium level managers.

In a Democracy, your contributions to healthcare, education, and social security will decrease if you are in a war, and/or have lots of offensive and strategic forces. Otherwise, contributions will be higher. Your taxes on citizen income will be low. Your corporation tax must be at least 30%.

In a Dictatorship, everything happens the way it does now.

In a Fascist State, your contributions to healthcare, education, and social security will be higher if you have lots of strategic and offensive forces, and are in a war. The corporation tax must be at least 45%. Your welfare will take a larger hit if you don't have good education, healthcare, transportation, finances, social security, and defense.

In a Kingdom, you take more taxes from citizens, and have zero contributions to healthcare, education, and social security. If you have a very high defense, and high offensive force, the hit to welfare for having less healthcare, employment, education, and social security is less. The general cost of government is higher.

In a Social Democracy, the corporation tax must be at least 65%. Your taxes on citizen income will increase if you have lots of offensive and defensive forces.Your contributions to healthcare, education, and social security will increase if you have a very high defense; but will decrease if you are in a war. Your welfare will decrease more if you have less healthcare, finances, education, transportation employment, or social security.

In a Socialist State, the corporation tax must be 100%. Your taxes on citizen income will increase if you are in a war, or have lots of offensive or strategic forces. Your contributions to healthcare, education, and social security are zero unless you have a good defense. Your welfare will decrease more if you have less healthcare, finances, education, transportation employment, defense, or social security.

In a Theocracy, you have greater contributions to healthcare, education, and social security, especially if you are in a war. Your citizen income tax will be greater if you are in a war, or have a high defense; and it will be lower if you have a low offensive and strategic force, or are not in a war. The corporation income tax must be at least 60% if you are not in a war. Welfare will go down if you are not in a war, and you will have a greater hit to welfare if you do not have very good healthcare, education, employment, or social security.

If you have a problem, or further suggestions, leave 'em here. I've no problem with problems.

No effects are to be added to Forms of Government. They are simply for show, they are simple tags.

Why would these systems have preset unmodifiable tax rates?
If its a communist state how are you ment to achieve high house value if everyone is paid the same?
Why would a communist state not have 100% tax rate yet a socialist state (a step down from communism) would have 100% tax rate?
A kingdom would have no preset modifiers, as basically your a dictator that is more legitimate. UK is a kingdom yet the people are free.
A dictatorship would have low welfare (which should really be called stability) which can only be increased by military.

When it comes down to it, in real life the direction of a country is dependent most on the leader, not the system of government. Would be cool if depending on your country the form of government changed, though I don't know what settings would produce your country to become Aristocracy or Kingdom.

Democracy:
Contributions decrease if you are in a war, or have high offense.
Contributions increase if you have high defense, or strategy.

Taxes will be low.
Corporation taxes will be at least 30%.

Welfare is normal.

Social Democracy:
Contributions decrease if you are in a war, or have high offense.
Contributions increase if you have high public services.

Taxes raised if you have high strategy, or raised with penalty to welfare if you have high defense.
Corporation taxes will be at least 50%.

Welfare decreases much more if you have low public services.

Socialist State:
Contributions decrease if your wars suck.
Contributions may fully pay off public services.

Taxes are normal.
Corporation taxes will be at least 67%.

Welfare decreases more if you have low public services.

Communist State:
Salaries are equal.
Contributions pay for public services if the people have the money for it.

Taxes are zero, but raised, with penalty, if you have low public services.
No private corporations.

Welfare decreases more if you have low public services.
There will be less executives, high tech executives, high tech seniors, high level workers, and high level mangers, if you have low public services.

Theocracy:
Contributions are high, but decrease if you aren't in a war, or have low offense and strategy.

Taxes are raised if in a war.
No limit on corporation taxes.

Welfare decreases more if you have low public services.
Welfare increases if you are in a war, or have high defense.

Fascist State:
Contributions increase if you are in a war, or if you have offense and strategy.
Contributions decrease if you have low defense.

Taxes are normal.
Corporations taxes will be at least 45%.

Welfare decrease if you have low public services, or if you wars suck.

Aristocracy: Less contributions.
Contributions increase if you are in a war. Automatic stock investment with government money.

Taxes raised, with penalty, if there's a low yield from investments.
There are no taxes on corporations.

Welfare decreases less.
General cost of government is higher.

Kingdom:
Zero contributions.
Salaries are artificially higher for executives, high tech executives, senior doctors, high tech seniors, and university teachers, and lower for all others.

Taxes more, with penalty.
No limit on corporation taxes.

Welfare decreases less if you have high defense.
General cost of government is much higher.

I do understand that sometimes it depends on the leader. But that is a rare case. Some of these types define what the government does more specifically. Some of them don't. So in a dictatorship, you define what it does. Whereas, in the case of kingdoms, a king is not a legitimate ruler. These guys would say that they were ruler because of divine right, and then they'd pay off the priests. Kingdoms were not free. They were feudal. The United Kingdom has a figurehead with, I believe if she can only vote, a little power above that which a United States citizen has; where "a little power above" means "yeah, she is a political figure with some influence."

The communist state has no corporations to tax. It's just workers and means of production. The higher tax for public services is a decrease in production value going to the workers. You can see it has a different system than the socialist state, which has private corporations but will not suffer from a chief executive making a lot of profit. Maybe they get money for managing the means of production, but they will get very little added value.

I don't understand your argument with the house value thing. I thought a stronger economy overall meant higher house values because the most amount of people can buy high valued homes. But it doesn't matter. I removed that. Public services just means education, health care, social security, and transportation.

I said more legitimate then a dictator. Because there is tradition and a general sense of who will replace them, unlike the fall of a dictator where every power monger will try to replace them (though can happen in any form of government). Kingdoms can be quite democratic and free, also the opposite. The same applies with any other form of government, there are just some forms that can keep the leader in check better.

My assumption was if everyone's wages were the same then the majority of houses would be the same value, if the value of houses were to increase it would have to stay constant with increase in wages otherwise no one in the country would be in a position to buy houses and the value would drop anyway.

Also I thought in communist and socialist governments that public services were fully funded, so why would there be any contributions? Whats the point of those forms of governments if you have to pay for your own education and healthcare?

If contributions take care of costs, then they are fully funded; so what's the issue? Contributions, taxes, little difference. The product to give to teachers and doctors has to come from somewhere. The way I mentioned is a way of enforcing good public services because there will be a penalized tax if, A)public services can't be paid with contributions, ie, not enough physical production to have services and decent living, and/or B)Public service indexes are not good enough. Notice that by doing this, public services will be paid off; the goal of a communist/socialist state. Although, this probably could be done with taxes; so in conclusion, whatever works. Either way pays for it. The tax system can be made just as tiered as the contributions system.

You're narrowing the definition of a dictator. It just means a single ruler. So my conclusion is that a dictatorship should be the player deciding how they want to run their 'vanilla-flavored' nation-state without bonuses or penalties.

Dictator=One person
Fascist=Despot
Kingdom=Feudal
Aristocracy=Class system based more on a capitalistic market than on political might of kings or emperors
Then you have Democracy and Social Democracy already. No need to say Democratic Kingdom. Just call it a social democracy as the left side of the king will start to 'derule' the markets and regulate them properly.

Yeah...

I like the basic idea you have... I would like the fact that I run a kingdom to be more then a tag.

I would like my pop taxes to reflect that. Also my military to do what I say when I say do it instead of when they feel like it.

I have Supply units that never do anything when I have units waiting on gasoline and supplies...

The United Kingdom has a figurehead with, I believe if she can only vote, a little power above that which a United States citizen has; where "a little power above" means "yeah, she is a political figure with some influence."

Err... my poliSci teacher once made a point, that goes directly against what you stated there:
The discussion was about "impossible war combinations"; what he suggested for the "funniest" one was a war between Canada, Australia, and UK.
Why would it be funny? Well, simply, each of those cases, the military is controlled/commanded by one person, and one person only. The Queen. So, what would happen? She'd take UK for Monday & Thursday, Australian Forces for Tuesday, and Friday, and Canadian Forces (whatever that means) on Wednesday and Saturday. Sunday is a day of rest.
So "some influence" is a kind of understatement.

On the topic under discussion, perhaps your government type would only deal with taxes of the population and corporations. Each government would be able to tax whatever amount it would want, but, would affect morale or stability or whatever you call it due to the way it does business.

As to the names of governments, here's a very simple guide - since, in actuallity, they are all tyrannies:

Feudalism - tyranny of bloodlines;
Democracy - tyranny of the 51%;
Fascism - tyranny of the few;
Dictatorship - tyranny of one.

The point I was trying to make. Unelected leaders does not have to equal tyranny, it usually does because of opposition of the population or other leaders. And no your mistaking hereditary rule with feudalism. Hereditary rule would be tyranny of the bloodlines, feudalism is the legal system which enforced this rule. Feudalism would resemble the stereotype of Italian mafia organization.

Also Democracy is no where near 51% rule, since not 100% of the population is eligible to vote, and there is not 100% turnout. 122,294,978 people voted in the 2004 US election, if everyone voted for the same candidate its only 40% rule if you count the entire population, and 55% if you want to get technical cant discount people that aren't eligible to vote. 62,040,610 people voted for Bush thats only 20% rule if you count the entire population or 28% rule if you only count people eligible to vote. Then you get into the electoral colleges where a persons vote has less or more merit depending on where they live 16% (Gore about .4% more) total rule for then entire population in 2000, and 24% (Gore about .2% more) rule for eligible voters.

I was being overly general angus, and trying (I guess I failed) to make a joke buy equating all the governments.

Personally, I think of democracy as, well, herd mentality. While you can vote split whichever way you want, the simple matter is, democracy is the rule of the majority. People-rule: demos cratus. Since people are the majority, you get the above. Couple of problems, how do you decide on voting right? You could have a democracy, where voting age starts at 121. Then what? Is it still a democracy?

wow what an awesome thread this is, extremely stimulating ideas !!!! i agree 100% that the types of government ought to have some real in-game effects.