Let’s Play NationStates

Two or three years ago, I got hooked on this online game called NationStates. The game is fairly simple: you register your own country/nation-state, select its attributes, and then by deciding on issues/dilemmas presented to you as your country’s leader, you get to chart the status of the country on three areas: political freedoms, economics, and civil rights. Based on the country’s status on these three areas, the country is categorized into one of 27 “UN categories” ranging from Scandinavian Liberal Paradise to Psychotic Dictatorship. The number and the happiness of your people, the economic performance of your industries, your government spending priorities, and the influence that the country can peddle is based on how dilemmas are settled and on the age of the country. Evidently, the game appeals to controlling political animals who would like to test their skill at governance and nation-building (GMA and Dubya, have you tried this?). For those who like role-playing, there is space in the game to spy on and/or correspond with other leaders, and there is even a mock United Nations where supranational issues are addressed.

Apparently the game is still up and running to this day; there are now over 75,000 countries registered that are actively being played. The server deletes countries that have not been played for 28 days, so obviously I had to register a new country to play (also since I already forgot the password I used for my old country, the Republic of the Capybaras).

The first step in nation-building apparently is to choose a name. I chose The People’s Republic of Pizzaloy to represent the love for pizza of my country’s citizens (and also their love for their great leader). Then I went on to choose a flag (I’ve always loved the Vietnamese flag), and a government style (sensible, liberal, oppressive, anarchic, evil… sensible seemed most sensible to me). I then typed in my currency (the “pepperoni”) and my chosen national animal (the Garfield). The country’s motto is “Onward to pizza heaven!“

The next step is to answer 8 questions on political/social/economic policies; the aggregate score determines the initial leaning of your newfound country. My answers (as follows) categorized my country as a New York Times Democracy:

A country should be judged by how it treats its worst-off citizens – Strongly Agree
Corporations do more good for society than harm – Agree
Marijuana should be legal – Disagree
The world needs to rediscover its spirituality – Agree
A lot of what’s wrong with youth today could be fixed by a year’s military service – Disagree
Capitalism is on the way out – Disagree
Without democracy, a country has nothing – Strongly Agree
It’s more important to deter criminals than try to rehabilitate them – Disagree

The very first issue I had to decide on as the country’s leader was on compulsory voting. Funny, since I had an ugly experience debating on this issue in the 2005 World Universities Debating Championships. It was the ESL Quarterfinals then and the motion was “This house supports compulsory voting in national elections.“ Our team was in the affirmative, and our arguments were 1. People rarely vote unless forced, because the effect of one’s vote is seen as insignificant compared to the sometimes huge effort it takes to go to the precinct (some sort of analysis on tradeoffs at an individual level), and 2. That in order for people to see through this, they should be forced to consider that their contribution in nation-building is the creation of strong democratic institutions (ie, they should initially be forced to vote to develop their political maturity so that later on they will want to vote and participate in democracy).

Unfortunately, the judges in that round (three Americans, I remember distinctly) didn’t like our arguments, and we ended up losing to lower-seeded teams (Argh! We were seeded first, and we got defeated by the 8th and 16th seeds in the fold! Argh!). Going back… Since I still think our arguments were great in that round (ahehehe), I voted for having compulsory voting in the People’s Republic of Pizzaloy. The following is the transcript of the dilemma and the choices:

Should Democracy Be Compulsory?

In response to a slow news week, certain highbrow newspapers have stirred up the debate over voluntary vs compulsory voting.

“Compulsory voting makes about as much as sense as having the death penalty for attempted suicide,” says civil rights activist Al Barry. “You can’t force people to be free! You can only give them the choice. Besides, if all those derelicts who can’t be bothered to get off their ass once every few years voted, who would they elect? I shudder to think.” [Accept]

“It’s not contradictory at all,” argues political commentator Abraham King. “The fact is, if not everyone votes, the outcome isn’t truly representative. Some groups–like elderly gun nuts–vote more often than others. That’s why we always end up with such terrible politicians.” [Accept]

“This raises an interesting issue,” says Violet Nagasawa, your brother. “And that is: why do we need elections, anyway? Seems to me it would be much simpler if you just decided what was right, and did it. Wouldn’t that save everyone a lot of time?” [Accept]

The decision (I accepted option #2) instantly changed my nation’s category from New York Times Democracy to Inoffensive Centrist Democracy. I guess I ended up taking away civil liberties from my pizza-loving citizens when I decided that democracy should be forced upon them. Hehe. The next issue at hand when I checked my nation-state this morning is about euthanasia.

Let’s play NationStates! Inform me once you have a country running so we can compare stats!