Livlandia, and inactive SC member nations in general

[Kaiser Malarbor I]

Looking at recent posts on Livlandia's forum, they haven't had a human post for a month, and the board is starting to get spam that hasn't been cleaned up over a couple of days at least. What should the Small Commonwealth do about member states that have gone inactive? Does the Commonwealth Assembly actually have the power to kick a nation out of the SC? Is it dignified to just toss a member nation that showed promise by the wayside?

In this case, Livlandia's representative, Artz, is still active in micronationalism, so she should be able to decide what to do, and take Livlandia out of the SC if that's the decision she comes to. But the more general question remains: SC member nations aren't forever. What procedure should the SC have to deal with dying nations?

[Andreas the Wise]

It depends on the voting rules (did we get any, in the end?). If it relies on a quorum of all members, then cleaning out dead nations after an appropriate interval (3 months with 0 posts is normally a good one) with a warning a month beforehand is an important policy. If we just require a majority of those who actually vote ... well, cleaning out dead members is less important.

[Jonas]

Another question: what if such a nation is part of the SCUE? What happens with the money and the bank accounts? Does it get divided between the other member nations or just disappear?

[Andreas the Wise]

http://shireroth.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 66&start=4

10. Should a signatory nation withdraw from this treaty, due to death or otherwise, all currency held in accounts registered in that nation shall be removed.

That said, we have no mechanism for officially declaring a nation dead if they don't do so themselves.

[Malliki Tosha]

Any mechanism for us to declare a member nation dead has to be put in the general membership treaty. My suggestion would be that the Primate and/or a majority of the Assembly can apply to the Commonwealth Court to have a nation declared dead.

[Dr Bjorn Olsen]

Any mechanism for us to declare a member nation dead has to be put in the general membership treaty. My suggestion would be that the Primate and/or a majority of the Assembly can apply to the Commonwealth Court to have a nation declared dead.

That makes a lot of sense and above all else, it's simple!

[Gert Geens]

I agree.

[Allot]

Yar.

[Maximilian]

I agree too.

Another question: what if such a nation is part of the SCUE? What happens with the money and the bank accounts? Does it get divided between the other member nations or just disappear?

Good question. I think disappearing would be best, but there will be a difference between the initial distribution the nation has recieved and the money that will disappear when the nation is 'deleted'.

[Harvey Steffke]

I feel the need to point out the ever-annoying fact that the Small Commonwealth Court only affects nations that have signed the treaty establishing the court itself. If we're going to involve the Court in larger matters, it may be a good idea to re-establish it as a judicial body that covers Small Commonwealth matters at large and isn't constrained to only affecting nations that signed its treaty specifically.

[Erik Mortis]

Agreed.

I never really liked the idea of just deleting all the money. What of people registered in that country who are still active? What if that money makes up a large portion of the total wealth. Maybe that nations money should just get divided up between remaining states, and we take a look into the individual people's accounts.

Or, if we really want delete the country and money, just remove the country from the server (easy) and set all accounts to Inactive, which will simply lock the money into those accounts. If no one comes asking for it in say, a month we distribute it.

[Andreas the Wise]

The theory behind deleting money is the same as behind adding it: That an economy should not have exactly Y dollars in it to avoid inflation, but should rather have x per person. So when we add new nations, we add new money for new citizens; and when nations fold, we want to remove the allocation of money from those citizens that have now left the hobby. Obviously we can't know that; and we certainly can't remove the correct amount of money if it doesn't happen to be all held by those citizens that have now left. So we go with the closest approximation, which is accounts in those nations.

So a mechanism for still active people retaining their money despite that nation's fall would be good. But to merely distribute it among existing nations - if we've lost citizens, that makes everybody else have slightly more money, and so each unit of their money is worth slightly less ... at least, that's the theory.

[Erik Mortis]

(Why did I make a new topic? Shows how sleep deprived I've been lately.)

I'll leave the money part to someone else, but on the political side...

Maybe something like this to the GM Treaty. (Assuming the basic structure of the Court is added to that Treaty).

The Primate unilaterally, or due to a majority vote of the assembly, may bring to the attention of the Commonwealth Court a nation felt to be dead. The court must then review the nation in question and pronounce it either alive or dead. If a nation is pronounced dead it shall be notified of the decision. One month after this notification, presuming the representative of said nation has not given notice of being alive, the nation shall be removed from the SC. From the beginning of these procedures to the conclusion the nation in question shall not count toward any quorums required for any vote in the SC.

[Jonas]

The theory behind deleting money is the same as behind adding it: That an economy should not have exactly Y dollars in it to avoid inflation, but should rather have x per person. So when we add new nations, we add new money for new citizens; and when nations fold, we want to remove the allocation of money from those citizens that have now left the hobby. Obviously we can't know that; and we certainly can't remove the correct amount of money if it doesn't happen to be all held by those citizens that have now left. So we go with the closest approximation, which is accounts in those nations.

So a mechanism for still active people retaining their money despite that nation's fall would be good. But to merely distribute it among existing nations - if we've lost citizens, that makes everybody else have slightly more money, and so each unit of their money is worth slightly less ... at least, that's the theory.

It's just an idea what I'm going to write down here, but I hope you can agree with me: instead of deleting the money, we move it to your stock exchange game. That way, you have a decent stock of money that can be given to players when they exchange their points back for money. And that way there isn't more money in the economy then their was before (and you don't have to pay for it personally).

[Erik Mortis]

My concern about deleting money if that a country might have more then they started with when we delete them. This could drain money from the entire system.

[Andreas the Wise]

The theory behind deleting money is the same as behind adding it: That an economy should not have exactly Y dollars in it to avoid inflation, but should rather have x per person. So when we add new nations, we add new money for new citizens; and when nations fold, we want to remove the allocation of money from those citizens that have now left the hobby. Obviously we can't know that; and we certainly can't remove the correct amount of money if it doesn't happen to be all held by those citizens that have now left. So we go with the closest approximation, which is accounts in those nations.

So a mechanism for still active people retaining their money despite that nation's fall would be good. But to merely distribute it among existing nations - if we've lost citizens, that makes everybody else have slightly more money, and so each unit of their money is worth slightly less ... at least, that's the theory.

It's just an idea what I'm going to write down here, but I hope you can agree with me: instead of deleting the money, we move it to your stock exchange game. That way, you have a decent stock of money that can be given to players when they exchange their points back for money. And that way there isn't more money in the economy then their was before (and you don't have to pay for it personally).

I quite like that idea, if it doesn't count as blatant embezzlement on my part.

For those who don't know, I've done up a stock exchange where you can buy and sell stocks with the exchange; as well as with other people; and do this with a secondary stock currency (so that currency can be deleted and created as needed). You can trade in SCUE currency for that currency; but currently you can't trade it out (there's just a huge prize for the first person to make 10 million of my alternate currency). If I had larger reserves of SCUE currency, then yes, I could set an automatic ability to trade out.
The stock exchange is fully functional on the programming side; but is lacking all the pretty pictures ...

[Malliki Tosha]

What happens when people die in the real world? Money gets inherited.

[Jonas]

but is lacking all the pretty pictures ...

Working on it. Just drew 4 new ones.

[Erik Mortis]

Mike, mostly we just let the government take the money back, unless someone wants to write up a micronational will or something.

[Kaiser Malarbor I]

The idea of moving the removed money to the stock exchange is clever, but IMO not good policy. For one, it wouldn't solve the inflation problem. I'd say that if people want to play the game they should gamble their own money.

... as for what to do instead, well, I do have an idea, but it's one of *those* ideas. Yeah, the ones that involve me going and implementing the Ripple monetary system (or, rather, a generalisation of it, because the original has some limitations which make it unsuitable for micronational use). And I'm talking about months of effort here. So, uh, we should probably still be on the lookout for ideas

[Jonas]

Inflation and deflation isn't (always) bad, it's a problem when there is too much of it and damages the trust we have in the currency. But by moving it to the stock exchange, there is more chance that the money will flow back quietly in the economics over time without disturbing the economy too much.

[Harvey Steffke]

How about this. When a SC member nation would die, a deadline date is set and all citizens that are part of another SC nation would be able to switch their accounts over if they say where they want to before the deadline. Anyone that doesn't, and any money in government accounts not tied directly to a specific person, gets deleted. There might be some last-minute bank fraud before the deadline where people try to get as much out of the government as possible, but if they can do that in a nation that has been declared dead, I say more power to 'em.

[Erik Mortis]

We could just move the dead nation money to the Admin account for later distribution. Or give it to an account for the SC...