Looking for Comment

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I'm looking for public comment about two things:

First of all, we're going to do a promotional video.  It'll be short-form, probably two different versions of different lengths but both under a minute.  Is there anyone who'd like to be featured in such a video?

Second of all, do folks have any opinions on what a target immigration rate might look like?  I was thinking that keeping it simple with one immigrant per month would be a good goal, but I'm open to suggestion.  For context, here's recent government terms:

Seneschal	Cosa	Months	Nats	Nats/Mo
T. Davinescu	56th	10	6	0.60
Plätschisch	57th	9	4	0.44
Tzaracomprada	58th	8	11	1.38
Excelsio/Sant-Enogat	59th	9	9	1.00
Schivă	60th	9	6	0.67
Schivă	61st	8	13	1.62
Schivă 61st (excl. Oct-Nov)	61st	6	4	0.67

"Excl. Oct-Nov" removes October–November 2025, when we had two viral Tiktoks about us.  This isn't intended to be negative in any way, and all credit is due to them for those numbers, but I wanted to highlight that this was crazily out of the norm so it might not be relevant to setting a target.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

I am of the opinion that a target immigration rate makes as much sense as a target fertility rate would in a larger country. It is a disturbing misdirection of resources which doesn't deal with *why* we want immigration.

The Seneschal has talked in the past about maintaining levels of activity - fine, but new citizens <> active citizens. Given this, surely citizen activity is what we should be targeting. Of course, that's harder to quantify in a number. But targeting something because it's easier to quantify, even though it's not the right target, is like the old story of a drunk looking for his keys under a streetlight because it's easier to see, even though he dropped them somewhere else. I have suggested in the past that the Seneschal has a fascination with metrics out of keeping with their actual relevance.

I am also of the opinion that Campbell's Law applies to Talossan immigration stats. Any policy which aims to "up the immigration rate" will render the immigration rate even less of an indicator of the actual health of Talossan society.

I am also of the opinion that the Seneschal's artificial carve-up of the immigration stats of my last Government because "it doesn't count because of external factors" is deeply politically dishonest. The Seneschal cannot be shaken from his belief that immigration rates are a function of Government policy; that if immigration is low it's because the Government doesn't care about immigration, and that when he's in power, he can make immigration flick up with his policy choices. But this is simply proven wrong, if he has to falsify the immigration stats from the previous government, to eliminate the impact of something out of the Government's control (without doing the same to all previous governments).

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I am of the opinion that a target immigration rate makes as much sense as a target fertility rate would in a larger country. It is a disturbing misdirection of resources which doesn't deal with *why* we want immigration.

The Seneschal has talked in the past about maintaining levels of activity - fine, but new citizens <> active citizens. Given this, surely citizen activity is what we should be targeting. Of course, that's harder to quantify in a number. But targeting something because it's easier to quantify, even though it's not the right target, is like the old story of a drunk looking for his keys under a streetlight because it's easier to see, even though he dropped them somewhere else. I have suggested in the past that the Seneschal has a fascination with metrics out of keeping with their actual relevance.

Just because a statistic doesn't reveal the entire picture doesn't mean it's useless.  Clearly, it's a relevant number, it's just not the only number that matters.  I think it should also be viewed with an eye towards activity on Wittenberg and a holistic sense about how things are going.  I'm not quite sure how to quantify the latter, though.  It might just be impossible, unless we do regular surveys (which I still think would be a good idea, just maybe a little much right now).

Really, as I've said many times, I don't think you can ever sum up the health of a country or group this size with any set of numbers at all. That doesn't mean they're meaningless, it just means that things are a lot more complex than that.

Our immigration rate is a pretty important thing to keep an eye on, and I do think that policy can affect it. I don't think it's an easy nut to crack, or like there's only one way to do it. But I do think that our choices matter. You have expressed the same thing many times in the past!

I am also of the opinion that the Seneschal's artificial carve-up of the immigration stats of my last Government because "it doesn't count because of external factors" is deeply politically dishonest. The Seneschal cannot be shaken from his belief that immigration rates are a function of Government policy; that if immigration is low it's because the Government doesn't care about immigration, and that when he's in power, he can make immigration flick up with his policy choices. But this is simply proven wrong, if he has to falsify the immigration stats from the previous government, to eliminate the impact of something out of the Government's control (without doing the same to all previous governments).

I guess you can seek out offense if you want, but not only did I not say that those two months "don't count," I actually went to some pains to say the opposite!  "This isn't intended to be negative in any way, and all credit is due to them for those numbers," to quote myself.  But if we're thinking about targets, I think it's helpful to break out those extreme outliers.  If there are other outlier months, we should also do that when we're thinking about a baseline.  This is a pretty common way to approach things like this: looking at the general trend.

In case it needs repetition: I think you absolutely deserve credit for creating an environment that took some advantage of the viral moments. Being willing to do things like update the form definitely made a difference. I just don't think that considering those months is helpful when we're thinking about setting a goal, unless we're also looking at the bigger picture.