The Fleecing Act

[Eðo Grischun]

Basic stuff is falling behind almost everywhere.

It is so easy to criticize and point things out when you don't do anything or volunteer your efforts.

We should actually give him credit where it's due on this one.

Some basic stuff did fall behind last term. Particularly, the usage of the Kingdom's social media which was woefully underused by the previous Minister, who actually happens to now be the leader of the party that Sir Davinescu now supports.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The Senator from Florencia has commented to me about how astounded he is at the political tribalism coming out of LCC and its supporters since the election, and I think he has a point. It's "Scientology ethics": someone who's on your political team is held blameless for anything, while an opponent will be impeached for sneezing incorrectly.

But I know that the LCC leader, the Senator from Maritiimi-Maxhestic, doesn't approve of that crap himself, and I've dropped him a note asking him to keep them quiet in the cheap seats.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

The most recent budget shows that we paid for almost the whole of our annual mandatory expenses (ie webhosting) from one term's worth of stamp sales, coin sales, and interest.  It seems as though we could fairly easily eliminate all election fees, rather than boosting them -- especially if we actually work to promote our stocks ($2600 or so in value, sitting on shelves) and run a contribution program (such as a GoFundMe for the webhosting fees).  Ideally, it should be free to participate in every aspect of Talossa if we can manage it.

If we get to the point where voluntary taxation starts to equal the webhost costs... but, that is not the case.

I literally just detailed how we are already at the point where we don't need to charge people to be in politics.  And if we did even a small effort at voluntary fundraising, we'd be nearly certain to run a surplus even without fees to hold office.  What, are we going to fail to raise the additional $10 over the course of eight months?

Basic stuff is falling behind almost everywhere.

It is so easy to criticize and point things out when you don't do anything or volunteer your efforts.

Bold words, especially without looking at Recent Changes to see my contributions.  But even if I hadn't had a chance to edit it recently, I think I probably have done enough with the wiki to merit the simple privilege of sounding the alarm.

And anyway, I reject this philosophy of "don't point out problems unless you can personally fix them."

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Also, and this may shock you, but it's possible to hear me say that basic stuff is falling behind at the wiki and just agree because it's true.  I didn't say "and it's your fault because you personally are responsible for doing it."  Updating the wiki isn't the job of the Government.  Agreeing that a problem exists doesn't mean you've lost an imaginary Talossa Point.  It means we have a problem, as a country, that we need to fix.

Maybe you guys are outraged at the level of partisan attacks because you're perceiving everything as a partisan attack.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

Let's just quote from the classics here.

Alexandreu, va estimat amic, I'm afraid that, based on your Talossan track history, everything you say ever is justifiably interpreted as a partisan attack. Look at that quote in my signature. You have spent almost 15 years fighting what are now the politics of the incumbent government, accusing supporters of those politics of all kinds of malfeasance ("ex parte corruption", "betrayed stolen kept", etc)., and are most recently on record as saying that the best thing the incumbent Seneschal can do for Talossa is resign and become inactive. No matter whether or not you are an active member of a political party or an elected official, you're as non-partisan as Sean Hannity or Al Franken.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Oh no, I activated your trap card!

[C. M. Siervicül]

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Sir Txec dal Nordselvă, UrB]

Nope I'm not outraged at all. I'm merely pointing out an observation based on lots of posts made by yourself to which I've not responded or gotten angry at or anything. I don't expect anything better from you really and whether your intent was partisan or "simply pointing things out" I could care less about you or your veiled attempts at smarminess.

[Eðo Grischun]

Mm hmm.  No outrage.  Just some eye rolling.  Your nonsense is really not worth the energy it would take to get angry.

[Ian Plätschisch]

Basic stuff is falling behind almost everywhere.

It is so easy to criticize and point things out when you don't do anything or volunteer your efforts.

We should actually give him credit where it's due on this one.

Some basic stuff did fall behind last term. Particularly, the usage of the Kingdom's social media which was woefully underused by the previous Minister, who actually happens to now be the leader of the party that Sir Davinescu now supports.

OK, while I am delighted to see the interim Government posting a ton to social media, I will not let my record as MinSTUFF be impugned like this. While my social media usage wasn't anything to write home about, it was a heck of a lot better than all other Ministers of STUFF I can remember. Since I became STUFF Minister last fall, I have made 16 posts to the Talossa Facebook page. Before that, no one had posted anything there for the past two years! The story is similar with our Twitter account.

[Ian Plätschisch]

Also, so long as we're memeing, I can't resist this one

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

 ;D I was a Liz Warren stan myself, but I've got no real problem with Bernie (as opposed to some of his asshole fanclub).

But seriously, a point has been raised as to whether election registration fees are a good thing in themselves, or just "necessary evil" revenue gathering. I.e., if we were getting enough louise and bence from other sources, should we abolish those fees? Personally, I think setting a small bar to Kingdom electoral participation is a good thing, which redirects people away from politics to other facets of Talossanity.

[Eðo Grischun]

Agreed.  Revenue raising is only one advantage of electoral fees.

Arguably, the small fee also limits the ballot to containing only parties that are actually serious about getting elected.  It stops the ballot being spammed with pointless, frivolous and novelty parties.

[Ian Plätschisch]

I don't have a strong opinion on that question, but in my experience every non-serious party has collapsed well before it came time to pay up.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

If people cannot do the interesting things they want to do, they will lose interest.  They will probably not become interested in the things we'd prefer they do, instead.

If a boy's father desperately wants him to like camping out in the woods, but the boy only wants to read comic books, the father can't make the boy like camping by banning comic books from the house.  The boy will still not be interested in camping -- and worse, he might not be interested in doing anything at all with his father.

Obviously, the father should invite the boy to bring his comics out on the trail with them.  The boy gets to do the thing he really likes, but he also gets a chance to be exposed to the interesting aspects of a new activity.

If we tax holding office, then we discourage people from holding office.  The tax isn't much, of course (right now), and the people who will be discouraged are mostly the young or poorer people or people who speak English as a second language.  But why are we taxing people for doing the fun things they want to do at all, if we can help it?  Isn't that kind of the opposite of what we're here to do?

We shouldn't be adding a tax on holding a seat in the Senats.  We should be eliminating the fee for holding a seat in the Cosa.