On the Citizenship Bounty Reform bill

[Ari Rahikkala]

I'm not a legalistic git so I don't mind if the bill obviously breaks Landsraad procedure... but it does seem kind of weird to me to give the dukes a choice of "either amend the laws this way, or amend them that way". I guess if we want to do this in a let's-kinda-sorta-follow-the-law-from-now-on-but-actually-get-something-useful-done-along-the-way-too way, we could pass the bill according to the procedure given by Andreas, have someone bring it before the Arbiter to be struck down, and then just pass the winner again according to the usual procedure (it wouldn't be the exact same bill - the "other choices" would be thrown away - so LawBook VII. B. 5. c. wouldn't stop it)... or we could just declare this round an opinion poll somehow... but, in any case, I'm not going to stand for a bill that tries to force the Landsraad's hand.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Actually, come to think of it, you can just ignore this post. I really don't care all that much about the formalities here, just that we somehow get to a fair decision. If the Landsraad chooses one of the options with something close to consensus and not too many people say they want a different option, I won't mind - if they like it, they'd choose it through any decent procedure, never mind what's in the lawbook. If the votes get spread around a lot or people say their preferred option wasn't provided, I'll take it to the Judex myself...

[Andreas the Wise]

You can always vote "No change," but I thought there was general agreement a change needed to be made ... just disagreement of what sort. By all means, treat it as an opinion poll then resubmit the winning one to be passed properly if you will ... but the current pre-Landsraad discussion was getting nowhere, and soon people will have been in the position for the requisite 3 weeks to necessitate paying them (eg Krasniy, Prodigy etc)

[Erik Mortis]

Vote for 2! Ari's idea is the best. People shouldn't get rewarded for being rewarded.


That being said... As Arbiter do I even need to mention how much this violates procedures and/or tradition...?

[Malliki]

I have to repeat what the Arbiter said. This bill violates the Landsraad Procedures, both in its layout and the voting procedure. It is definitely not "presented in the form of an unambiguous change to the LawBook".

[Malliki]

*Pushes Fors & Bekkenhuis*
We may be hired to draft bills, amongst other things...

[Jess]

How much does it cost?

[Malliki]

Individually negotiated on a case to case basis. PM me if you're interested.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

I have to repeat what the Arbiter said. This bill violates the Landsraad Procedures, both in its layout and the voting procedure. It is definitely not "presented in the form of an unambiguous change to the LawBook".

But the option that is selected will surely represent an unambiguous change to the Law Book.

[Malliki]

What rules the bill violates:

Procedures of the Landsraad, section 2:
"The Landsraad passes changes to the LawBook. Each bill is presented in the form of an unambiguous change to the LawBook, and must have a name used by no bill presented before it. Any Voting Member of the Landsraad, the Kaiser, and the Praetor, can present a bill for voting."

The bill is not in an "unambiguous change" format. It is presented as several suggestions on possible wordings. The current wording of the law is included, but not referenced for easy access. As the Arbiter said, this "bill" is actually several bills rolled into one.

Section 3 of the Procedures also state that bills shall be voted on using Ayes or Nays, or any equivalent. Voting "Suggestion 1" or "Option 3t; is therefore not a valid voting procedure. It also makes it more difficult for the Prætor to tally the votes afterwards. Is he to declare the bill with the most votes passed, or hold a run-off between the two most popular options, etc.

[Andreas the Wise]

Which is why when Ari pointed it out above I said 'Ok, we'll just see what people think, then repropose the popular one as a single bill' I didn't need it explained by the arbiter several more times ...

[Malliki]

There is no such procedure allowed in the Procedures of the Landsraad either.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Ack, I guess I need to explain myself a little bit further. (and to actually figure out the reason why I intuitively felt that this bill is so wrong)

I really don't mind the fact that the bill breaks procedure. I can't remember the last time we passed anything exactly according to procedure anyway. It's actually kind of useful, as the Judex will be able to easily take the law down and we won't have to bother with the legal complications of the "declare it was just a popularity contest all along" "solution".

The only real problem with the bill is that it's a single-choice vote from a set of more than two candidates. In a binary choice, voting for one or the other is OK - either you're completely neutral in which case you won't vote at all (i.e. abstain - they're the same thing in the absence of a quorum), or you prefer one to the other. Add one more choice to a plurality vote, though, and it breaks horribly. What if, of three hypothetical choices, you prefer A to B and B to C, but C is winning and B is a close second? You'll have to make a choice between tactics and principles, and it's not your fault, it's the fault of the broken votig system. As a less hypothetical example, what do you think of the way Ralph Nader attracted Democrat votes in the 2000 US presidential election? Unless you happen to actually approve of Bush as president (uhhhhhhhh), you should think the same of this bill.

(maybe we should add a preferential voting system to the Landsraad? We... probably shouldn't, I'm afraid it would cause a bias toward wanting to pass one of the given choices instead of happily voting nay as the Landsraad fortunately does a lot. I have no evidence regarding whether this would actually happen.)

[Malliki]

Violation of the Landsraad Procedures alone is, AFAIK, not reason enough to allow us to nullify a law.

[Jess]

It nullified the economy for a while.

[Erik Mortis]

On the topic of the bill itself. I honestly haven't seen any good argument for why we should reward people for being rewarded already. We give money to people for gaining a position they should have already have had the power and influence to achieve already. Why do we reward duchies with baronies? Or that change Dukes often? But my biggest question is why we give rewards for getting rewards?

[Jess]

Its just a way of giving people more power with their promotions.

[Erik Mortis]

Power they should have been able to accrue on their own, and that further waters down the Crown Account.

Did we ever pass that bill the set a budget for Ministries and such?

We need a governmental Budget. Preferably a balanced one! This government needs to be Financially responsible. If we only take in 500 erb a month from taxing, we shouldn't be spending more then 500erb a month on bounties and other payments.

[Malliki]

Doing away with all rewards except for citizenship is a good start to financial responsibility.

[Jess]

Wouldn't that just be more complex?

[Erik Mortis]

How so?

[Jess]

A balanced budget? Someone violates it and another tries to sue them...yadda yadda yadda

[Erik Mortis]

Not if the ministries had accounts with set amounts of money in them per month.

[Jess]

That makes sense.

[Andreas the Wise]

The main reason is fairness to those who didn't get paid heaps but have now worked up, compared to those who did get paid heaps and aren't ever spending it ... (though I suppose with Ardy gone the Crown gets +1000 ....)

[Erik Mortis]

That's honestly a bad reason. "We screwed up once by giving out to much money.. but we need to be fair and keep screwing up and giving out to much money. "

[Andreas the Wise]

Well if you object to it, what you should do is make an attempt to reverse it. Not, that is, to remove all the money people were initially given - that was for the reason, obviously, of putting us in the position we should of been had we already had an economy. What you should do is reverse some of the more significant monetary grants AFTER the system was put in place ... which (looking back at the financial records) ... would be the paying of the two later Stewards (Ardy and Harold) and of Duke Yvain's getting 100 for being a Duke (since Erik already got his 200). We haven't paid out any other dukes and the Baronial payments we have made seem minor enough to be fair.

Reverse (or, if not totally reverse, ask for 100 back) those, and then you can legitimately say "no more citizenship bounties," because after that point, effectively, no more were paid after the initial distribution. I've avoided paying the new ducal payouts (eg Prodigy, Krasniy and now Wil) for precisely that reason ...

[Malliki]

When the law is changed the law is changed. If you didn't get money under the old system, too bad.

[Andreas the Wise]

No saying the previous system is bad?
No saying the previous system was good?
Not even considering attempts at fairness?
No casting judgement on payouts in either way - just sticking to what the law says?

If that's going to be your attitude to this bill, I'll just make sure my Duke votes to keep the law as it is. Then we'll both be happy.

EDIT: If it isn't clear, I see the merits in the argument for removing the citizenship bounty. I just value the fairness bit higher. Fix that issue, and I'll happily vote to remove the further payment of bounties. Leave it hanging, and I'm still a little worried by the fact Elwynn has 1000 more erb than any other Duchy (largely through excessive government payouts), just is currently keeping 1000 of that in Shirekeep.

[Malliki]

You have to set the cut-off point somewhere.