Quote from: Antaglha Xhenerös Somelieir on July 17, 2020, 04:20:17 PM
For all that I've said above and more. I ask my fellow citizens to vote for FreeDems in the coming election, for a party that truly cares about the people, and has been, is and will continue to be a force for Change to build Talossa that we can all believe and take pride in.

There are fewer active Talossans each year, and even those who are active are much less active than before.  Fewer Talossans vote in each election.

You yourself are a good example of the drop-off in interest... you have eleven posts here, total, even though this Witt became official in February.  In the year prior, you posted more than a thousand times on the old Witt.  And there can be all kinds of reasons for that, but you're not the only citizen who's approximately 1% as interested in Talossa as they used to be.

So if you're advertising the Free Democrats, your pitch should probably not be, "We're going to keep making Talossa great."  Things aren't going great.  Your pitch should probably be, "We're going to dramatically change our approach to account for the dramatic decline in interest on our watch."

I vote for Ian.

Who is eligible to vote?  What are the methods by which we can vote?

Sounds like things are going great, then.  Glad to hear it.  Best of luck.

Quote from: Eiric S. Bornatfiglheu on June 18, 2020, 08:37:47 PM
But where are the royalists?  Why aren't they here making their own fun?  Is the real answer that they were just driven off by big meanies?

Miestra has suggested that we are sulking in a boycott.  I guess in this conception, someone like Sir Cresti still really would like to do Talossan stuff, but is refusing to do so as a form of sabotage.  This seems unlikely to me.

But if you're actually interested, it might be worth writing some of these folks and asking them directly about why they stopped being interested.  There was an anonymous opinion survey a bit ago, but if there's interest in why some people specifically lost the taste for Talossa, that's one way to find out.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 08:07:20 PMAgain, de gustibus non est disputandum when it comes to what's "fun". Direct democracy would be, in my terminology, a Radical Peculiarist initiative, in that no existing state actually does it, and so as a Derivatist I prefer something like our current representative democracy for Talossa. But there's certainly an argument to be made for it.

I'm glad we're in agreement that compromises are being made with regards to democracy.  You'd prefer a more realistic imitation of larger countries rather than a more democratic Talossa.  And that's fine -- I actually agree with you.  But the compromise exists.  More democracy is sometimes an unalloyed good, but sometimes it represents a compromise with practicality, fun, or realism.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 08:07:20 PMI'm having a lot of fun in Talossa as-it-is.

I suppose that's one possible approach to governing.  I'm glad you're having fun, though.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 08:07:20 PM

Quote
You're the elected leader of the country with enormous power and almost no opposition.  At a certain point, aren't you even slightly responsible for the direction of the country under your rule?

Again, we're talking about cross purposes. Sure, we all agree that there should be more cultural activity, and even that the current Government's ideas on how to ensure that haven't worked as well as they should have. But your analysis of what kind of cultural activity there should be, and what the Government can and should do about it, is totally different from my own. And democracy, at the moment, has given my "team" the power to try things out.

You (Sir Alexandreu) have made a decision that you're going to stop trying to win political power, as is your right - but aren't you (Talossan conservatives) even slightly responsible for the direction of the country if you've stopped trying to be in a position to improve things? I'm not responsible for other people's abstentionism and boycotting. You appear to still be upset that I (and others liked me) fought things we didn't like in Talossa, and we won. I wish that you and your co-thinkers would do that, instead of IMHO sulking. Sarcastic occasional asides about the incompetence of the Government and Imminent Death of Talossa Predicted do nothing but annoy us. They don't make anything change.

We've got to work together rather than to stick our political opponents with all the blame, if we are to have a better nation.

This is a very longwinded way to say that, no, you don't accept responsibility.  But okay.  I wish you the best of luck with your analysis of what ails Talossa and what the solutions might be.  It's been a year and a half, but maybe you just need more time.  I do love Talossa, so I hope so.

For years, you compared conservatives to people like Stalin and Pol Pot, saying that our corruption and authoritarianism was the problem.  When the RUMP became a minority party, you said we were obstructionists who were getting in the way.  Now that the RUMP no longer exists and conservatives have mostly just stopped being interested in the country, how can we possibly still be at fault?

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PM
The first thing to notice about Sir Alexandreu's programme is that it's a Peculiarist programme. This may well come as a shock to members of both Peculiarist parties, and indeed to Sir Alexandreu himself who, I believe, strongly identifies as a derivatist. But Peculiarism means the rejection of the concept that Talossa should seek to model itself on other, "real" countries.

Defined that way, sure.  But I've always identified as a derivatist because I believe that Talossa should act like a real country in a very real sense, not in the paleoderivatist sense of blindly mimicking much bigger nations.  Monaco doesn't have a real military, but rather transitioned its military into a fire/EMS service and a royal guard service, because they recognize that they're dependent on France for any real military protection.  Monaco does what makes the most sense for Monaco.

Talossa should do the same.  We shouldn't have a military except to the extent that a military serves our needs.  And all the rest of our government should be the same.  The people are not served by blindly trying to mimic much bigger countries.

To the extent that this means that I get a different label, I don't care.  But the government exists to serve the people of Talossa, not the other way around.  There are fewer Talossans and they're not as interested in the country or as happy to be here.  That's a problem, and policies that cause that problem are bad for Talossa.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PM
I should note that in passing that one recent innovation that Sir Alexandreu seems to like – interview of Uppermost Cort Justice candidates by the Senäts – is copied directly from the United States and is thus a Derivatist initiative.

It makes sense, because it's fun and interesting.  Arguments about semantic labels seem kind of bizarrely besides the point.  Label things however you want, it won't change the voter turnout decline.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PMEven if we were to concede the argument of Sir Alexandreu that the three reforms mentioned above have made Talossa less fun, or less inviting for new citizens, they are democratic. Pushing back on monarchical power and restricting the Cosa to people who've actually won votes are democratic reforms, i.e. they increase the accessibility of political power in Talossa to people who politically disagree with the King, or with whichever happens to be the biggest political party with the most seats to give away.

The most democratic form of government is a direct democracy.  We are easily small enough to accomplish this.  We will be small enough for direct democracy for a very long time, especially at the current rate of decline.  By your logic, your post of prime minister should be abolished.  We should instead just vote on individual issues each month, opening up the Clark to everyone in the country.  That would be dramatically more democratic.  But it would be less fun, so we're not going to do that.  You just want to draw the line in a different spot between practicality and democracy.  And I'm arguing that the line should be further towards fun, because people aren't having fun and that's the whole purpose of being here.  The proof is in the numbers.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PMThe part where Sir Alexandreu does have a point is that integrating new citizens into Talossan politics is harder if we can't just give them seats in the legislature. I must admit that I assumed that, for example, a new citizen who wanted a Cosa seat would join a political party and aim to get on its list, or wait until the next election, start their own party and vote for themselves. For whatever reason this hasn't happened in a while. At the recent Council of Governors, I suggested that this might be substituted by giving new citizens preferential roles in provincial government; but this idea is still to be fleshed out.

You can't force people to be interested in things that bore them.  If you try to make people wait to do the things that interest them, most people will just move on.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PMFor those of us who chafed under 9 terms of single-party RUMP government, it certainly wasn't "fun" watching the ruling party celebrate their own greatness all over Wittenberg. I got a lot of trouble for posting a THIS PARADE IS NOW ILLEGAL meme. The political point was of that was that RUMP parades reminded me of Orange parades in Northern Ireland; a dominant cultural/political group parading to rub the noses of their political opponents/cultural Others in their own powerlessness and exclusion.

Yes, we got the message.  You have made it clear you find "hey let's put on a pretend parade based on a theme" to be offensive because it reminds you of political oppression in a different context.  And it's pretty much impossible to argue with someone about why goofiness is fun, so people stopped.  You won, and there was no more RUMP parade.  And that was one less interesting thing to do.

You asked about some of the reasons why people aren't as interested in Talossa, and one of those reasons is that it is indeed not a "safe space" to be silly.  So folks have mostly stopped being silly.  Maybe you think that's good, but it has consequences.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PMIn a future speech to the Ziu, I intend to address the question of to what extent "Talossa's activity crisis" is in fact a political strike, or boycott, by the conservative faction.

I will be very curious to see that.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PMBut I simply will not agree with backpedalling on democracy because it's less "fun" (at least, less fun for the former ruling faction).

If you want a country that is perfectly in accord with your ideals, no matter the consequences, then you will have to endure the consequences without trying to blame others.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PMI have three letters for those who argue that any new party would get monstered by those in power: NPW.

Literally three sentences after this one, you admit that there's no strong political opposition.

Quote from: Miestrâ Schiva, UrN on June 18, 2020, 04:45:08 PMAs I will address in my speech to the Ziu later, the problem of "a lack of political diversity" right now is a real one, but should be laid at the feed of conservatives who boycotted the election or – even worse – collected conservative votes and threw them in the trash.

You're the elected leader of the country with enormous power and almost no opposition.  At a certain point, aren't you even slightly responsible for the direction of the country under your rule?

Quote from: Eiric S. Bornatfiglheu on June 18, 2020, 07:36:06 AM

4.)  Whoa-Boy, the Infrastructure- Sleek websites and forums are very nice.  But they're also a huge pain in the tuckus.  Talossa will always be beholden to its nerds to keep things running, but I often think back to the geocities era of micronationalism and wonder if there wasn't something to the "quick and dirty" method of hanging out your shingle.  From what I've gathered, maintaining this stuff has been a thankless job.  This can be extended to a lot of stuff handled by the overall civil service.  You hear from the requisite minister when you miss a deadline, but not otherwise.  Do we have too much STUFF?

I agree.  This is one reason why I think the wiki is the best platform for most of our records and the like.  It's transparent, keeps records innately, it's very easy to understand and edit, and it operates based on very widely-used software.  The database is kicking up errors and has things that just can't be fixed without its specialist designer.  It's very impressive and cool, but it's also made us wholly dependent on MPF for most things to do with it.  That's just the way it is, and it's not a problem now, but it might be in the future.  Plans should be made for a future time when the database breaks and MPF is unable to help.

Sorry, was just thinking about this, and that's unfair -- "I know but I won't tell you."  Dumb of me.  In brief and off the top of my head:

it was a mistake to ban newbies from the Cosa, since jumping right into the Cosa is very fun;

the way that organized parties and the government avoid embarrassment by reaching private consensus before taking action is very professional but very opaque, getting in the way of one of the fun things about Talossa -- the ability to see and participate in parts of a society that are normally out of your reach;

monarchies are interesting because strong monarchies are really rare in almost every country from which Talossans immigrate, and here we even get to personally interact with the monarch, but instead we keep shifting more and more to versions of the same forms of government most people already live under, and that's boring;

a lot of people in charge don't prioritize the major problems (inactivity, voter decline, lack of political diversity) as highly as the changes they personally wish to make to the country regarding their specific hobby-horses;

a lot of the silly fluff that was fun, like the RUMP parade, was really easy to mock, and so now it's gone;

any new potential political groups would need to endure some cruelty, and it's just not worth it;

a lot of schemes for encouraging activity have been dumb because they relied on the assumption that restricting people from doing some fun stuff would force them to do less fun stuff, but in reality people just skipped the whole thing.

There's probably more, but that's all I have off the top.

I am sorry, but you are the elected leader of Talossa.  It's a position you avidly sought to obtain and to retain.  You are responsible for governing the country.  I am just a citizen observing we have serious problems.  I certainly have ideas about what's causing these problems, but I'm not going to start offering policy solutions and advocating for their adoption -- I got out of politics a while ago, and I am much happier for it.

Maybe making Talossa a republic will be the thing that fixes the drastic and continuous decline in activity and voter turnout.  That would be a good thing.

I don't really foresee a lot of trouble for your bills, don't worry.

I resign my post as head of the reorganized Els Zuávs.  I stand by the idea, but obviously it relies exclusively on myself to keep it going.  Since I have drastically downgraded my level of Talossan involvement, it would be irresponsible to retain my office.  I expect the institution to become moribund, but it would also be a perfect post for someone new with a lot of enthusiasm.  If the national atmosphere ever changes, then I hope someone will seize the opportunity.

There was a special midterm referendum on the monarchy just a few years ago, with 71% of respondents saying they wanted to keep the monarchy and 60% saying they didn't want it to be a figurehead.  I guess this question will be asked over and over in different ways until it produces the answer that is desired.

Hope Luc and his family are doing okay.