Apologies all, work's been crazy the last couple of weeks.
In regards to the comments from my colleagues Reps. Weatherboy, Wxtransit and Politicmasta - my view is very strongly that by abolishing the God we made we will take the dramatic pronouncements of policy impact out of the hands of a removed (this, of course, is dubious!) single individual and instead replace these tablets of stone with debate - we would argue, with evidence of similar policies' impact in the real world or with studies, or on ideological grounds, for the positive or negative results of policy. A leftist Representative would argue virulently, citing the Scandinavian example, that an expansion of the social welfare system would improve societal outcomes, more than justifying the increased tax burden. A conservative Representative would argue against the principle of an ever-expanding state, the vast expense, and the moral hazard of an all encompassing welfare state. And so on.
It would not be perfect, and I cannot claim that abolishing the Game Moderation system will be a panacea. But I think there's a strong case to be made that returning policy impact to the realm of open debate would be a dramatic boon for activity. And, frankly, in years past we've seen that this happens anyway to some extent - when there's a GM report that people disagree with the tendency has been simply to ignore it, or dismiss it as partisan. A sign, surely, of the ineffectuality of the position.
I should be clear - this is not a personal attack on any individual GM. I've spoken many times about how inactivity is a structural problem, not a moral failing. Whatever my distrust of his character, I'll happily concede that 'Crooked Harry' Truman has been a 'good' GM by the established standard. But we cannot always rely on simply finding the needle in the haystack that is a committed and active GM at every stage. At some point, our incumbent will retire, or resign, or go to prison, and we'll be back in the same old position again.
I'm painstakingly going through all of our GMs and drawing up just how much work any of them actually did in office - you know as well as I that it's been, sadly, the norm, not the exception, for a GM to take office, put out a few half-assed unemployment figures, and then resign in disapprobation after a prolonged period of inactivity. It's true that there was only a two year prolonged period where the position was literally vacant, but there's been far more time where the position's being
de facto vacant and we were none the worse for it.
I'll post the results of my historic analysis shortly.
