Join the new world

Dear fellow comrades,

It is not often that I write articles for the people because, normally, I am discouraged from making articles that have a lack of information or are just plain pointless. Today, however, is different. Today I will be talking about my predictions for the eUK: it’s society, political standing and future governments. I am not making the assumption that these predictions will be perfect or correct, but they are formed from ‘e’-sociology, drawn from an examination of the history of the eUK community. Keep in mind that some of the conclusions I draw over the following paragraphs may be linked.

The removal of the ambassadorial positions, the scaling back of ministries, removal of roles perceived as superfluous, and the gradual diminishing of the MoHA, has removed the stepping stones for new players in the lower 5 parties to get into upper-tier politics. The decreasing size of government ministries has caused apprentice and particularly under-minister/minister positions to become more exclusive, and as a result those newer or less experienced players are joining the top 2 parties under the preconception that doing so will grant them a position within our ministries within a shorter time frame than if they joined a smaller party. This polarises membership of political parties towards the largest two or three (explaining the membership difference) which in turn reinforces the preconception that these parties can fast track people into government.That is to say, that the size of the parties creates an illusion of political power which the newer player interprets as a means of being heard, as they feel a larger party is a better vehicle for advancing their own political career. However they may not always be heard, may vanish into obscurity or may be passed over in favour of the party elites. It is worth noting that this system may allow exceptional individuals a fast-track into government, but it is very much up to the party elites to decide on whether candidates are worthy of elevation. Overall, this framework can serve to ruin any chance of any opportunities for newer players as they come to realise that the positions available will be so heavily swollen with potential candidates that only the experienced players will be able to achieve key positions. Please note that it isn’t impossible to achieve high positions within government and still be in a minority party, but the chances may be substantially reduced for those who have neither had past experiences in government nor held anything above PP roles.

The main source of opportunities for less experienced players will come from having a CP elected from their own parties. An important factor that must be under consideration, is that the lesser parties will no doubt still exist. But the inevitable brain-drain (the emigration of skilled individuals either abroad or simply to another political group) will resort in the party in question having a smaller impact in politics generally. An obvious means of tackling this would be to produce more deputy positions in the remaining ministries, but this can lead to players that have not been trusted before being neglected and given reduced jobs. This comes with a high-risk low-reward ratio that could cause more harm than good; not only to the gaining of influence/experience as if many uM’s undertake menial tasks then the value of the uM position itself will become devalued - with people coming to think that a uM role involves very little work or confidence; but also to the retention rate as the pressure of doing menial tasks, that if done incorrectly could lead to the end of that deputies political career, but if done perfectly, wouldn’t further his/her career in anyway may prove to be a troublesome environment for upstarts.
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One must also recognise the importance of community to left-wing parties. By simply ‘cutting off the dead weight’ of the MoHA, we are obliterating a dimension of the game that has produced the only realistic source of party diversity within, not just the eUK, but throughout the eWorld (with the exception of 1 party states). This may seem an odd statement at first but when you consider that it is understood that Foreign Affairs, Defense issues and Finances are expected to remain consistent and effectively apolitical, party differences only have scope to manifest themselves in domestic politics. An example that proves this point can be found in not-too-recent history; when NE first appeared on the political scene they attacked the eUK Monarchy; something the other parties understood to be centred more around entertainment and some form of semi-ironic (or semi-serious for some people) jingoism. This dimension may seem annoying or fruitless, but the entirety of eRepublik is based on these simple, yet effective, divisions between parties. It may be no coincidence that as domestic ministries have shrivelled, party politics has declined into a state of petty bickering rather than debating policy differences.

The only logical means of surviving such an impossible downfall would be for individual party communities to instigate their own initiatives that assume the former MoHA roles of entertainment and education. However, this creates a further reduction of MoHA roles as the achieving of any national support and/or financing that would be unheard of if said games were in anyway associated with a single party. With the left-wing’s emphasis on community discussed above, it may be that the parties interested in running such initiatives are primarily left-wing. What we have in reality however is a facade of domestics whereby almost all parties have some scheme of giveaway or entertainment, but these are not versed through an institutionalised arena for domestic politics, but are simply thrown out in the form of cheap giveaways or prizes which more or less act as bribes for people to join a particular party and so the larger parties with more resources (or gold buyers) stands to gain the most. Therefore the idea of a newer-player, that is also left-wing (or right wing, though they aren’t always associated with pumping resources back into the community) and/or in a lower level party, who has games that are genuinely beneficial with a social/community value at its core and that ideally ought to be nation-wide can be thrown out the proverbial window, if MoHA is shut-down because their ‘idea’ will either go unnoticed or be appropriated for party recruitment means. In addition, it may be argued that this is simply party rivalry taking up the reigns of domestics but in reality all we do is deny ourselves the ability to work together - the games and giveaways we see from parties are often repetitive and sometimes exclusively for members. If those who work to set up party games joined the MoHA with other eager-beavers, we may see new and fun games for the national community emerge.

Now, the opposing side will contest that MoHA is pointless for one of two reasons; the first one being, the players that have ever worked in MoHA are “unfortunate”, “lonely” and “mythical”. Let’s have a look at the list of these people shall we… Mr Woldy, RodneyMckay, Catterick, BigAnt, ChewChewShoe, Wookie0, FightandProduce, Daniel Thorrold, Bowen199, Robalbinio, Karaticus, Horice G Fossil, Asher Di Immortales, BetaFoxTrot, NiceGuyEddie and Stefan1992. Obviously there are more big named individuals, but due to them not putting their names on each article (probably because they didn’t care about attention and/or titles). Some of these may not have gained their experience through MoHA, but they all used it as leverage to further their political careers and help the community at the same time. I have also learnt, from my research, that MoHA has been given difficult tasks that would have been seen as departmental jobs in 2009, a few key areas like recruitment, community support and education were all operated by Under-Ministers before being broken off into their own Ministries (and sometimes absorbed back in again) over time depending on how the CP candidates wanted to run their Cabinet.

The second reason would be that people don’t need titles to do work. Now there are two ways you can argue against this. You can argue my previous point that no-one wrote their name at the bottom of an article at the first few years of MoHA’s introduction. Or you can say that, look at the population statistics produced by Kevy Kev in 2010 which will show a massive 5700 decrease in the past 3 years. The only major difference out of admins hands is the reduction in titles and ministerial positions. (One must understand that Kevy Kev’s statistics are on the population as a whole, to get a good idea of how many people were active, you can view voting records from 2009 to present on the elections page). If we check the former voting records, and keep in mind that the current active voting level is around the 486 mark, we see the following pattern:

Although we can put most of the reduction in activity levels down to the admins reforms on the political and military modules, we must acknowledge the facts that our own decisions and attitudes towards the game shape the community we work in, and the graph shows how decisions such as those effectively getting rid of our Congressional/Political framework have had an adverse affect on population levels. I do not believe this to be a coincidence. eRepublik is what you make it, and we have to make the eUK an entertaining and inspiring place for new and old players alike otherwise we’ll simply dwindle away. This is why our domestic ministries are so important.

To conclude, not only does MoHA push for retention, is a stepping stone for newer players and unifies the country under the set idea that community should come first, but it provides an arena in which party policies can be laid out in a way which deviates from our current system of petty bickering and personal attacks.

I would like to thank the following people for helping me create this article: Mr. Woldy, Adastros, Dr. Kawishiwi, Zaphod, Malice, Chewchewshoe, Sam010, Superlama, LongShotZz and Dan Moir. Thanks 🙂