Join the new world

This is the fourth in a series of five short articles about the role of government in eRepublik. Please subscribe to this publication so you are notified when the next part is released. If you don't like reading short articles, the entire series will be released in a single compilation after all sections have been released.

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - The General Welfare
Part 3 - Congress & The General Welfare

Part 4 - The Community

As mentioned in the Introduction, each citizen has their own beliefs, desires and intentions. One such intention that is common to the majority of citizens in The New World is to help fellow citizens.

Offers to provide free gifts, offer free food, donate money and provide helpful advise are everyday occurances in The New World.

It is this aspect of a republik which ultimately makes our eLives worth living. And it is this aspect that poorly governed regions often fail to appreciate.

This is because Government tends to regulate and formalise this process, reducing the incentive that individuals have to help their fellow citizens. After all, why bother helping someone out if the government will do it anyway?

eRepublik governments usually approaches this in two ways:

1) The creation of a Department of Education (or equivalent) is one of the best ways eRepublik governments can promote a community. Centralising articles, discussions, tutorials and knowledge in general allows new citizens to feel part of a community sooner and a republik that does this successfully is likely to retain more citizens and develop a healthy, caring culture.

2) The creation of a Department of Health Services (or equivalent) is one the worst ways eRepublik governments can promote a community. Government programs which provide gifts or food or jobs may seem like a humanitarian thing to do, but these endeavours are always paid for via taxation and distort the market forces at work in the gift and food industries.

Playing favourites by taking from one group of citizens to benefit another group is in direct conflict with our definition of the general welfare.

Governments which engage in activities described above are well advised to reduce the tax burden on their citizens rather then pay for these programs themselves. Let individual citizens determine how they spend their money. They will spend their scare resources much more efficiently than a bloated government department ever will.

In short time, you will find that caring individuals will band together and create charity organisations to help citizens in need. You will find that without the taxation burden, companies have more incentives to produce and employ citizens. You will find that citizens will be helping each other because they want to, not because they are forced to.

This can only help a community to develop and is consistent with our theme of general welfare.

Next

The fifth and final article in this series will review the learnings of this series.