Tant01

The allies are pleased to inform the world of the latest multinational efforts to get emergency aid to the victims of the recent disaster.

Supplies to sustain the most desperate are on the way to those in need. The efforts of (former ) enemy states to ensure stability during the recent crises are bound to be dramatized to overshadow the generous humanitarian efforts now under way...

__________________
While the old form, jujutsu, was studied solely for fighting purposes, Kano's new system is found to promote the mental as well as the physical faculties.

T. Shidachi, 1892

Mike Brewer

***ENDEX***ENDEX***ENDEX***

The end of the exercise is now official. It fell short of expectations, but I am extremely grateful for everyone's participation. Please rest assured that as soon as I have "Spread it around" sufficiently, I will be awarding as much positive reputation to the players as possible.

I'll also come back in a week or so with some conclusions, although I won't copy my whole paper here. In the interests of sparing you the boredom of a political science project, I'll only post the stuff I think will piss everyone off and start arguments.

Thanks again to all who played, and to all who watched with interest.

Let's all please take a moment and pat each other on the backs for some really good efforts, and some great behind the scenes diplomacy (and backstabbing). Please, I encourage you all, hand out some positive reputation to each and every player here. No matter what role you played, you deserve some appreciation and I simply am not allowed to give enough to effectively express my appreciation.

Thanks again everybody.

Tant01

What exactly was the purpose of the experiment Mr.B?

Entertaining and interesting but still feels unfinished or futile...

I don't understand...

__________________
While the old form, jujutsu, was studied solely for fighting purposes, Kano's new system is found to promote the mental as well as the physical faculties.

T. Shidachi, 1892

Mike Brewer

Believe it or not it served its purpose well.

The exercise was to determine whether "good" politicians had an easier time with various incidents than do "bad" politicians. I ran this same experiment elsewhere, and the Presidents had remarkably different approaches. TTEscrima came through as the most honorable, upstanding of the bunch, but his approach didn't really get him out of the mire any better than the backstabbers' approaches did. In fact, the conniving and backstabbing Presidents had a much easier time in the short term gaining cooperation on critical issues. In the long term, chances are that kind of thing will blow up in their faces, but that's a different experiment. This time around, it seemed to indicate that even the best of intentions and the most honorable and honest means of dealing with the public is no more effective than the most corrupt. Sad finding, really.

What I did was to put into place several constants. The first was that free market corporations will in most cases:

• Attempt to avoid perceived excessive taxes.
• Attempt to maximize profits by both reducing costs and increasing revenues.
• Attempt to persuade governments nad the public to align with their best interests.

KOTF did this marvellously in his portrayal of the oil lobby. He pressed onward for a gas tax, which would have most likely raised consumption at no real cost to the Gas companies. The government would have taken the hit in terms of taxes, and the consumers would purchase more, so a gas tax holiday in that sense makes the gas companies a lot of money.

I also assumed a few loose guidelines about international relations. Among them:

• Sometimes, there are no good guys. In the end, all sides will look out for their own best interests as they perceive them.
• Enemies can and have historically cooperated on some issues despite being diametrically opposed on others. This can be expected in future dealings. After all, if Israel was willing to provide weapons to Pakistan and cooperate with Egypt and Saudi in the days of Soviet invasions of Afghanistan, is it really that far fetched to assume enemies might cooperate on energy interests? It happens already every day.
• Good information can shape decisions for the better, but sometimes it just doesn't matter.
• Bad information can shape decisions for the worse, but sometimes it just doesn't matter.
• Human beings make decisions - not "governments." And as such, decisions are subject to such human factors as distraction and division.

In this exercise, any number of situations developed that were potential pitfalls, and TTE handled them well. I was providing intelligence to all parties, but I gave TTEscrima by far the best information on all the other players. He decided to play the honest and truthful role, so I wanted to give him honest and truthful intelligence without political bias. Problem is, that meant he had advance warning of most of what was going on, and sometimes the signals for big issues got lost in the details of smaller issues. I'll post examples of this after I sort through everything.

Likewise, I gave some lop-sided information to the press. Like in real life, they had good sources (the lawyers for the arrested terrorists) and bad sources (several of the others who gave partial or incomplete hearsay testimony). They ran with things based on what they felt was defensible, and sometimes they were wrong.

The people were inspired to come to conclusions based on snapshots of the real story - sound bites and tag lines. But they had access to the press and to public statements. They could research if they wanted to, just like we can. Often, they didn't care to do so.

As is common in real-life, the President sometimes came across looking hypocritical even though he had the very best of intentions. A good idea and honest intentions can be misperceived or misunderstood in ways no one would anticipate. Selling off 30% of his personal wealth and donating it to the public (while highly unrealistic) should have been seen as a noble thing to do. But it also had ramifications in other areas caused by natural skepticism. When a rich man suddenly dumps every scrap of his holdings in a single industry, people panic. When that person also controls the policies that govern the industry, that panic is perhaps even easier to understand.

So in a nutshell, the Leader's Dilemma is the Law of Unintended Consequences played out in small scale. Try to do the right thing, and do it with all the right tools, and it can still end up screwing you. Not always, but it certainly can. In a week, our President here managed to alienate the people of his Allied Nations with a single policy determination and drive them right into the welcoming arms of his adversaries. He probably had a negative effect on his own stock market, just by trying to do the right thing, and he got slammed by the very people he was trying to help when he sold his oil holdings.

Given the relatively slow pace of this, and the tiny, miniscule timeframe (and the fact that his intelligence service was well wired into ALL sides of every issue) and he still faced serious challenges, can you imagine what real world leaders have to contend with?

treelizard

Well, I didn't post everything I was supposed to because I got slammed at work.

__________________
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. --Louisa May Alcott

For a good time, visit http://www.dirttime.org

Mike Brewer

No problem, tree. Everyone was a volunteer, and I don't hold it against anybody if and when life gets in the way. It's just an internet forum, and you guys were helping out of the goodness of your hearts. I thought you did really well.

And like I said, the exercise served its purpose.

treelizard

Nonetheless, I know there was some key information I was supposed to get out to the public...but I can't remember what it was!

Instead I wrote about Brittney's new tattoo.

__________________
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. --Louisa May Alcott

For a good time, visit http://www.dirttime.org

Mike Brewer

I was hoping you could have covered the oil deal between the enemies and allies so people wouldn't have thought it was a come-from-nowhere sort of attempt to cause confusion. That was one topic that was being discussed on all sides from the second or third day, and all sides had an interest. I think I sent you a PM talking about the enemies and allies maybe trying to work something out since the President didn't want to include anyone in American oil?

In any event, your coverage was probably not far off the American press anyway. Doesn't matter what information they have - they only report the sensational, right?

treelizard

Oh yeah, I got very limited information from the allies though. Like, three word e-mails and such.

And yeah, I was trying to emulate our media.

__________________
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. --Louisa May Alcott

For a good time, visit http://www.dirttime.org

Mike Brewer

It was very much like the real world in that respect. The Allies issued press releases and public statements about wanting to get involved, and then it changed to "We're willing to take our money elsewhere." If you had had the time, a quick Q&A with Tant01 might have netted you some pretty solid answers. For that matter, contacting the Enemies might have done so as well. But it doesn't matter. Even the President didn't read those statements with enough concern to send his intel people out to look for possible problems.

treelizard

I sent Q+As but didnt' get a whole lotta info back. What I got I posted (it was before the Brittney headline)

__________________
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. --Louisa May Alcott

For a good time, visit http://www.dirttime.org

Tant01

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."


-Thomas Jefferson

__________________
While the old form, jujutsu, was studied solely for fighting purposes, Kano's new system is found to promote the mental as well as the physical faculties.

T. Shidachi, 1892

Mike Brewer

Which is why we are, in point of fact, a Republic.

DickHardman

uh, please treelizard, this is a family forum. kids can access this forum , its not a place for you to divulge your steamy workplace sexcapades. please, have some class. thanks again.

treelizard

..................................

__________________
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. --Louisa May Alcott

For a good time, visit http://www.dirttime.org