Join the new world

Dear fellow eKiwis,

wherever you might have come from - in game and in RL. To me, it does not matter.

At the beginning I liked this game because it looked somehow global. New world they call it. Well, economically it is not a new world. I had quickly figured out that in eRep the dominant economic credo is protectionism which has been proven to fail in the long run in RL. It's a concept of the past century. Also the many different currencies, that are hindering trade. RL is more advanced, at least in Europe where the Euro has superseded many national currencies. But socially and politically, I thought that eRep really was a new world.



I worked in Chile, made Business in Canada and Germany, and settled in Thailand. Thailand was a nice place at this time because it was run by an international community. People who did not care much for RL Thailand's history. And then I found out that eRep is a quite old world, also in a political sense. Too many people do not differentiate between their RL and their e-life. In Thailand it was never a problem, maybe because the RL players were never a strong group. I have always had a certain respect for RL Thais playing the game and I wanted RL Thais to be part of the government, but I did not see a negative effect of nationalism.

I have seen the negative effects of RL nationalism being transferred to the game in other regions. The Indonesians hate the Malaysians, the Polish hate the Germans, and Greeks and Turks hate each other since one thousand years. Many eRep wars are fought because of irrational RL dislikes. No, unfortunately it is not a new world.

Why can't the names of our countries be Arnor and Gondor instead of Russia and Australia?



Can New Zealand become the new Middle Earth?

Technically, we can make it. It is an international community, and New Zealand has the particular advantage of the English language, which is spoken at least as a second language by most of us.

The problem is, if we cannot reuse our preconceptions from RL, we need to think ourselves. [irony] How do we know who is good and who is bad if history does not teach us this knowledge? [/irony]

How do we know that the Serbs who are rushing into New Zealand are bad?
How do we know that the provisional government is good?
Isn't it all the same? Just people seeking power, none of them democratically elected?

Well, I see a difference. Forget all the words, and judge by the deeds. My favourite statement is: Trust must be earned.

People who work for the country before they have the official power, are in my personal opinion good.
People who seek the power first, are ... not so good.

However, eRep game mechanisms are not prepared for such categories. eRep is a simple number game. You can bring a few hundred friends (or clones) and get elected even if you do not have the qualification nor the will to bring a benefit to the country. In Thailand,we had many presidents who did not even publish a single article before the elections. No one knew what their goals or their plans were, and still they won the elections. Some of them did it only for the medal, like Ciman. Others stole the national treasury, like Luthfisnet.

As eRep game mechanisms do not help the honest and diligent people, we need to supplement them. We need additional rules to protect ourselves. We need government orgs to store our funds, we need rules for the distribution of passwords to these orgs, we need rules for avoiding dangerous law proposals, and we need rules that let only these people get elected who have shown positive work before. And all of this must have a democratic basis.

We need a constitution.

If you have not yet, join our forum and read the proposed constitution texts. Comment, or propose your own. Thank you for your contribution.