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[Zangi]

Ah cool, at least the next one will fix it.  I'll just keep date-napping to a minimum.

[Servant Corps]

* Servant Corps sighs.

Let see if I can lay out the Deficit Hawks' view effectively. As far as I remember, the National Debt causes two problems:
1) Government, in order to attract investors, may decide to raise interest rates, which will affect economic growth negatively. There is also a crowding-out effect on businesses, as more people will loan to the government rather than to businesses. Businesses gain less capital as a result.
2) There is an incentive for the United States to inflate or "monetaize" the debt, meaning the US Dollar will lose value and inflation will increase.

Now, I admit there has been problems. Despite rapid spending in the Obama era, there is no change in bond yields, suggesing people are still buying bonds. At the same time though, Obama is selling more inflation-tied bonds and reassuring China and other countries that the national debt will go down. We'll see if the deficit hawks are right or not soon.

Deficit Hawks worry specifically about entitlement spending, which will ballon with the retirement of baby boomers. This means an increase of Social Security spending and a corrospending reduction of income. The debt simulator I programmed in LCS does not simulate this entitlement spending dynamic effectively.

The fact remains though, deifict hawkism is not as "sexy" as health care or abortion, so that's why a "default" mechanism would be necessary, to get the LCS to pay attention to this. Lower economic growth doesn't really seem to..."help" in that regard.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Why should the LCS be concerned with the national debt?

[Zangi]

Naked people, they cause this error when they die.  Its been annoying me... >.>

[mindlar]

I've noticed a couple cash bugs with the latest revision:
1. Spending a week on a cheap vacation when dating causes a crash.
2. Successfully converting conservatives while away causes a crash.

Some odd behavior that I've noticed:
1. When sleepers get outed and sent back as regular members they continue with the same tasks that they previously had assigned.  It would be best if their orders were set to lay low.
2. Units that are away with orders appear to continue those orders.  For a group of interrogators that I had, this led to the crash when one of them successfully converted a hostage a day after a raid.

[Servant Corps]

Why should the LCS be concerned with the national debt?

Because you need money to fund an Elite Liberal democracy, with its welfare state and pollution regulations. Of course, the Elite Liberal way to stop the national debt is to get rid of the military and raise taxes on the rich, but in the meantime...

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I'm not asking why the LCS should want taxes raised in its vision of the eventual Elite Liberal utopia. It already does. I'm asking why the player should be punished for something not fully under their control, simply because a conservative economic theory speculates that banks and corporations may not get loans at good rates if the national debt is too high.

Wikipedia: "Deficit hawk is an American political slang term for those who place great emphasis on keeping the federal budget under control. Deficit hawks are fiscal conservatives that believe the best way to reduce the deficit, pay off national debt, and balance the budget is by increasing taxes in addition to cutting government spending."

Deficit hawkism is not only "not sexy", it's not Liberal either, and it contradicts the stated platform of the LCS. So why should any mechanic be necessary to get the LCS, or the player, to pay attention to it?

Furthermore, this is not a game about instituting policies and simulating the results. That would be Democracy. LCS is about pushing a body of pre-chosen reforms by absurd and violent means. Any changes to the game world as a result of these reforms are for color and cool factor, not to limit the player's options. Having a mechanic that effectively moralizes to the player about how they aren't allowed to push the issues in the wrong order or else they'll drive up the national debt is diluting the purity of the game's focus and bias.

[Servant Corps]

...Oh. Oops. Then I guess I have to consider taking out the National Debt mechanic then.

As it stands, with no default mecahnism, a high national debt only causes certain people to be more persuaded to raise taxes and cut spending. And a low national debt causes people to be more persuaded to lower taxes and increas spending. That's about it. It's an interesting mechanism that can be used to simulate 'complex' issues (with Liberal "right" answers and Conservative "wrong" answers) like energy independence, and such, but it does nothing other than that, and it could easily be overcome. However, if it does dilute LCS too much, then it's not really a good idea. Hm. Let me think.

[Antagonist]

Took some time again, SVN source compiles again.

For the other devs: Whats still needed before we can wrap this up into a release?

[Michael]

Why should the LCS be concerned with the national debt?

Because you need money to fund an Elite Liberal democracy, with its welfare state and pollution regulations. Of course, the Elite Liberal way to stop the national debt is to get rid of the military and raise taxes on the rich, but in the meantime...

In that case, a default would be a good thing. Most countries could balance their budgets quite nicely if it weren't for the interest payments on yesterday's debt.   Default would mean casting off that burden.

It would have a number of interesting other effects, but not anything that would kill the LCS.  The LCS could even thrive in the chaos.

[Fieari]

I think it would be neat to have economic difficulties merely as a way of maying the game more difficult nearer to the end.  If economic downturns happen -for whatever reason-, preferably not linked to any particular policy, and people start getting more conservative feelings as a result, it'd make you really have to push harder.  Make it happen while you're on the slope towards winning, and we have a fun gameplay mechanic, ramping up the curve at the end.

Maybe this shouldn't be the only end game mechanic possible.  There could be other events that trigger and cause people to get more conservative.  And the key would be that each type of event would require being taken care of in different ways.  Each of the events could be picked at random, and should be overblown humourous things-- so not just a recession/depression, but a "Fight Club" style complete revokation of the banking system with large bombs.  Not just a natural disaster driving patriotism up, but an Alien Invasion.  Not just a big-tent religious revival, but a cult religion (like scientology) creating a massive wave of conversions.

Each event would be purely triggered by your proximity to winning, but would be more or less a scripted even, not arising naturally out of the mechanics.  And again, each would have to be handled differently.  But it would be so much fun.

[Zangi]

Each event would be purely triggered by your proximity to winning, but would be more or less a scripted even, not arising naturally out of the mechanics.  And again, each would have to be handled differently.  But it would be so much fun.

New liberal options arising to deal with said situation?  That would add to the end-game...

[Little]

I like the old end-game idea better, the one with Radical Moderates.

[The13thRonin]

Is a new version coming? And if so what's it have?

[Servant Corps]

* Servant Corps shrugs.

I think it is ready, with a couple minor things need fixing.

Fox, when do you think it is coming out?

What will it have:
1) Settings (Strong CCS, Classic LCS, etc.)
2) Economic/National Debt Simulation
3) Stalinist Comrade Squad
4) Two New Laws: Human Rights, Welfare
5) Some updated news events