Responding to the Hospital Issue

Day 790, 13:14 • Published in USA Australia • by Aeros

Well, it’s been a few day’s since my opening article that kicked off this debate and I’ve given the opposition time to lay out its side. Those of you who are interested no doubt read many of the debates in the eUS forums and here in the news media. It is clear that the status quo has broad spectrum support among powerful members of Congress, as laid out in their vehement defense of the pristine Fortress regions. Unfortunately, I am still not convinced that the status quo is the right path for the country. Our active population continues to decrease, there are numerous reports of new citizens falling through the cracks in the current welfare system, and the government has still not explained how they would handle a baby boom in the US under the present situation. What this say’s to me is that the status quo is broken, and to religiously cling to it jeopardizes the future success of our country.

In case you missed it yesterday, the United States had more than 500 new citizens join. Any other country on the planet getting that many new citizens would have practically leapt for joy and begun an all out effort to retain and add on to their baby boom. Here in the USA, it did not even register on the radar. Not only that, our population is down more than 600 new citizens from our National Goal setting population of 24,900 at the start of the month. For the math impaired, the eUSA has been “baby booming” at four to five hundred new citizens a day for the past couple days, and our overall population is down! Not only that, but as an editor of a major paper I have also noticed that US activity is vastly reduced from a few months ago. Many fewer articles are being published, and the number of votes per article is also vastly decreased. The opposition say’s that this is normal for the US, that we have merely gone back to the way things were activity wise pre invasion. They also claim that the hospital system that existed pre-invasion did not help this “normal” retention problem one bit. Of course, they also fail to mention that before PEACE invaded the USA, we were not doing anything as a country either that would have held the peoples interest. Right now however, we are involved in a major world war in which the USA stands a good chance to emerge from as one of the New Worlds leading powers. I find it hard to believe this argument that it’s the games fault we cannot retain as many people as other countries. What this argument say’s to me is that the current rulers of our country are trying to shift the blame to a nameless, faceless entity instead of their own failed policies.

And what are those failed policies? How about the naïve belief that a few dedicated workers are able to single handedly message 500 new people every day and get them moving tickets. Don’t believe me? I’ll let these two gems from the comments I received in my paper speak for themselves.

As a relatively young player, only an eGuy for a month, the first week or so is very confusing. I was unable to tell my elbow from a hole in the ground most days….I have no experience with any of the programs or efforts aimed at helping new citizens. I fell through the cracks. I could have been stuck in some state with no idea how to improve my lot. Siege of Herons

I never got a moving ticket from the welcoming comity, I worked hard and moved when I finally learned of the fortress policy during a congressional election. You can thank Shermain for bringing it to my attention. SolstaLynn

Those comments are coming from two individuals who overcame the wasteland and became active in the country enough to see the article and get involved in the debate. How many others just like them have been left behind? We will never know, and for that reason they can be conveniently overlooked when the Senate rolls out its fancy looking charts on eUS activity levels. I am not trying to argue that these welfare policies by themselves are a bad thing. Far from it. What I am saying is that they are not enough alone. We need a stable safety net to provide for new citizens in the wasteland who do not get the help right away and find themselves screwed over without a means to get their wellness up and a deep enough understanding of how the game works. This moves into the crown jewel of the oppositions argument; Noobishness. New Players don’t understand how this game works and so the argument goes, if you provide them a Q2 Hospital, they will not move to a Q5 hospital, thus endangering Americas economy and security. As a wise man once said to me however,” ignorance can be cured, stupidity cannot. “ The cries of new players for a hospital in their home state and the refusal to leave it come from ignorance, not stupidity. Eventually, most will learn that they can do much better for themselves in the Q5 regions and move to them. This comes from learning how the game works and is a natural progression. What is stupid is to deny these people the safety net because we do not want to deal with a small minority of idiots. I am not arguing in favor of this hospital program for the 10% that will abuse it. I am arguing for the 90% that will benefit from it and ultimately benefit our country.

As a final point, our Government in all their arguments for the status quo overlooked one very, very important factor. Real life population. The population of the United States is estimated to be 325 Million. That is million with an “M”. Poland, the present world population leader with more the 60,000 citizens has a population of 38 Million. Our two biggest states without infrastructure support (Texas and New York) combined have a population of 43 Million. That is 5 million more people in just two of our states than in the entire nation of Poland. What this say’s to me is the USA could conceivably have a baby boom of 60,000 citizens in New York and Texas alone. Is our wasteland commission prepared for this? For that matter, if this occurs, it won’t just be Texas and New York that will boom. What about other big states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio? If our population boomed in the same ratio that Poland’s has, we would supernova to 100,000 citizens easily. At least at first. At our current rate of retention (1% estimated) we could gain just 1,000 active citizens from an instant baby boom of 100,000 people. The remaining 99,000 would either die or be only partially active. In short, the eUSA is literally sitting on the verge of missing the opportunity of a life time, because these booms usually only happen once. Hungary had their boom in Beta, and then nothing. For the USA, all it would take is a profile on CNN or some other major network or media publication, and we would see a surge of interest for maybe a week. And during that time we will see the Congresses’ precious wasteland commission get sandbagged by 100,000 moving ticket requests because all the states the new citizens are being born into have no infrastructure to keep the people alive with. We will watch that opportunity of a lifetime slip through our fingers like so much sand, followed by heart felt apologies from those charge stating that “they never saw it coming”.

I hope this article shows you that supporters of improved infrastructure in the country are not some lunatic fringe. In fact, major proponents besides myself include senior military commanders and Americas Hospital Contractor (who builds them free of charge on a charity basis) Max McFarland. Because of Max, new hospitals will not cost the US Government any money. This makes the argument for the Status Quo an academic debate, not a financial debate. Even with that, nobody is saying we should put hospitals in every state in one go. Rather, we are arguing for a moderated approach of steadily building up our countries infrastructure over time, starting with critical states like Texas and New York. While the opposition claims to have many facts on their side that say we should not do this, I am not buying it. The status quo is bad policy and is sacrificing the future growth of our country for more near term strategic and political calculations. For this very reason, the status quo must be changed or we will continue to see our country getting surpassed by other nations with a fraction of our potential population.

And as if we needed anymore urgency for fixing our retention woes

http://www.erepublik.com/en/country/society/Hungary