Politics and Government Revision

[Koko]

This is just simple: we've tried several iterations of political RP and at its most popular with the people, recognizable district representatives were a thing and it seemed like tangible change at a local city level was possible. I feel that among others, these are very important factors as to why people simply don't care about political RP:

 

a) The marijuana legalization fiasco (when it was hard vetoed by an unelected government official due to OOC politics, despite players going as far as making IC demonstrations and grassroots organizations as well as senators pursuing legalization) proving that there's not a lot of significant change that can be pursued other than the color of hat you wear while hunting.

 

b) The repeated instances of what were at least perceived as if not flat out rigged elections where coincidentally we have equal representation from both parties.

 

c) A generally pretty unengaging, uninspired or flat-out ridiculous stable of political characters who often appeared from thin air and disappeared in a couple weeks whenever things didn't go their way, or that pretty much don't have anything politically exciting to say other than post on Facebrowser with their own personal agendas that are always pretty inconsequential. There was always a certain type of player who at some point had been playing an eternal character and decided "maybe I'll change careers a sixth time and become a senator".

 

d) Concentrating on the state level instead of the city level. People liked having a district representative and to be able to have a figure of reference representing their district.

 

Right now literally nobody cares about the Senate, it just is what it is. There's really simply nothing to care about other than whichever tiny detail they are able to legislate about. A community of 1000 players isn't going to dedicate any significant time around a concept that's pretty much sterile.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Koko

[DasFroggy]

21 minutes ago, Koko said:

a) The marijuana legalization fiasco (when it was hard vetoed by an unelected government official due to OOC politics, despite players going as far as making IC demonstrations and grassroots organizations as well as senators pursuing legalization) proving that there's not a lot of significant change that can be pursued other than the color of hat you wear while hunting.

 

This is going to be the killing blow every time. Legislation isn't going to ever be popular if there's always this looming and incredibly likely risk of it being shut down by someone who has an OOC agenda that doesn't line up with the already wildly unrealistic IC conditions of the setting. 

[Anders]

1 hour ago, Koko said:

This is just simple: we've tried several iterations of political RP and at its most popular with the people, recognizable district representatives were a thing and it seemed like tangible change at a local city level was possible. I feel that among others, these are very important factors as to why people simply don't care about political RP:

 

a) The marijuana legalization fiasco (when it was hard vetoed by an unelected government official due to OOC politics, despite players going as far as making IC demonstrations and grassroots organizations as well as senators pursuing legalization) proving that there's not a lot of significant change that can be pursued other than the color of hat you wear while hunting.

 

b) The repeated instances of what were at least perceived as if not flat out rigged elections where coincidentally we have equal representation from both parties.

 

c) A generally pretty unengaging, uninspired or flat-out ridiculous stable of political characters who often appeared from thin air and disappeared in a couple weeks whenever things didn't go their way, or that pretty much don't have anything politically exciting to say other than post on Facebrowser with their own personal agendas that are always pretty inconsequential. There was always a certain type of player who at some point had been playing an eternal character and decided "maybe I'll change careers a sixth time and become a senator".

 

d) Concentrating on the state level instead of the city level. People liked having a district representative and to be able to have a figure of reference representing their district.

 

Right now literally nobody cares about the Senate, it just is what it is. There's really simply nothing to care about other than whichever tiny detail they are able to legislate about. A community of 1000 players isn't going to dedicate any significant time around a concept that's pretty much sterile.

 

You mean the European election system?

[Barbary]

The common theme that seems to keep popping back up here is that as long as the Government can't enact laws themselves no one will care. Maybe SAGOV needs to sit down and try to hash out better terms that give them more leeway? OOC oversight is a necessity but at the same time people need to have a reason to want to RP politicians beyond participating in the frills.

 

I was also curious why county Governance was never given too much limelight. Here in the US, counties and major cities can have pretty absurd amounts of autonomy. And LA County operates fairly differently than the rest of California due to it's circumstances anyway.

[Martyn]

2 hours ago, DasFroggy said:

 

This is going to be the killing blow every time. Legislation isn't going to ever be popular if there's always this looming and incredibly likely risk of it being shut down by someone who has an OOC agenda that doesn't line up with the already wildly unrealistic IC conditions of the setting. 

 

The sad truth as to why nothing will ever change and you can run whatever "engaging" elections you want but if you can't actually do the things your character promises and runs a campaign for because it'll get VETO'd anyway if management doesn't like it then it becomes something people are just not interested in. It will always be background noise and players can only really use said political positions for status. And sadly, due to the nature of GTA:W as a whole especially after the pandemic the server has been getting abused by people with certain OOC "needs" and they don't shy away from using their fictional (both IC and OOC due to the veto's) position of authority in order to get what they desire. Politics isn't even their main focus since they can't make any reasonable change anyway which just damages their personal development/progression as a character rather than enhancing it. 

 

I both admire political character for still trying and find it quite sad because your character by default is a shill for the government to give people a false sense of democracy.

[Kappaurel]

19 minutes ago, Martyn said:

 

The sad truth as to why nothing will ever change and you can run whatever "engaging" elections you want but if you can't actually do the things your character promises and runs a campaign for because it'll get VETO'd anyway if management doesn't like it then it becomes something people are just not interested in. It will always be background noise and players can only really use said political positions for status. And sadly, due to the nature of GTA:W as a whole especially after the pandemic the server has been getting abused by people with certain OOC "needs" and they don't shy away from using their fictional (both IC and OOC due to the veto's) position of authority in order to get what they desire. Politics isn't even their main focus since they can't make any reasonable change anyway which just damages their personal development/progression as a character rather than enhancing it. 

 

I both admire political character for still trying and find it quite sad because your character by default is a shill for the government to give people a false sense of democracy.

 

The other issue people don't like to talk about is how most (a huge percentage) of people don't bother roleplaying or properly portraying their character's political ideas, so they self insert their own.

 

Not only California is a democrat state, but Los Angeles is INCREDIBLY blue.

 

 

I know Los Santos is not Los Angeles 1:1, and that San Andreas is not California 1:1, but the playerbase clearly has no interest in properly portaying politics or ideology of their characters. Makes no sense that 80% of Los Santos votes republican.

 

Players self insert that need to be and feel "based" and "redpilled" more often than not, instead of portraying an according ideology for a character born and raised in Los Santos (or in Liberty City, same deal, incredibly democrat leaning city)

 

And don't get me started about the brutal and unrealistic amount of immigration, specifically from certain areas of the world (I won't specify, because this is not a witch hunt, and I have no wish to offend, attack or target any specific player, group or organization, this is a conversation about the server's politics status)

Edited June 14, 2023 by Kappaurel
Typo

[H04X]

Los Santos, and by extension San Andreas have a unique political culture that corresponds with the community. Yes, Los Angeles and California have been largely blue in recent times, however the Senate remains community-driven, and if the community wants a certain political party to be in power then that will happen. I am not going to force ties and perfect splits like mandated by previous iterations of LFM, because at that point why even have elections? I've invested quite a lot of time into creating a more engaging system where the community can directly get involved, which will also create more competition between the parties. We ran into some issues with developing our website for it, but it will happen.

Server Management has been very conservative with issuing vetoes, and I mean that literally and not ideologically. Off the top of my head, it was used twice: once for the weed because LFM/IFM opposed it, and another time for Organized Crime Control because it wasn't coordinated with IFM/LFM/LEO/illegal factions. Vetoes aren't dished out like candy. I'm actually surprised we haven't had more vetoes, which is something I'm trying to discuss with LFM so bills can be ICly vetoed for ideological purposes, adding another layer of politics to the legislative process with no real OOC drawbacks.
 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:00 PM, Barbary said:

I was also curious why county Governance was never given too much limelight. Here in the US, counties and major cities can have pretty absurd amounts of autonomy. And LA County operates fairly differently than the rest of California due to it's circumstances anyway.

This is something we've been working on for quite a few months now, albeit not a priority. Given that the server currently does not have local level politics, a few of us wanted to fix that with a county board for more menial things. Admittedly, a lot of laws that pass the Senate aren't things that should be state law, but there are no alternatives. It's either the Senate (or perhaps a controversial executive order....), or nothing. There are no city or county ordinances, no city council, no county board, no alternatives. 

 

On 6/14/2023 at 4:17 PM, Koko said:

d) Concentrating on the state level instead of the city level. People liked having a district representative and to be able to have a figure of reference representing their district.

 

City level politics won't happen. But if you read back, the proposed system we're working on creating actual district boundaries for the State Senate. We currently lack them, and it creates a whole lot of problems. I actually have a draft for how the districts will be drawn up, but it's still v1.0!!
 

On 6/14/2023 at 4:17 PM, Koko said:

b) The repeated instances of what were at least perceived as if not flat out rigged elections where coincidentally we have equal representation from both parties.

 

Refer to what I said in the beginning of this comment. But to add onto that: it's either rigged elections so we can either force a split or a Democratic majority to copy irl California, or we do legitimate elections where the community can actually pick who they want. And I can confidently tell you the following: out of all the elections we've ever had, only 2 of them were not rigged: the last Senate election, and the Mayor Halford election. 

 

On 6/14/2023 at 12:30 PM, Wasloos said:

I just want government employees to be corrupt... When I was told that you can not be corrupt in the government, that almost caused me to completely distance myself from legal RP, due to the absolute absurdness of that statement.

Corruption guidelines soon..... 👀
 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:37 AM, mj2002 said:

Hey there, I haven't quite been following the developments on this topic. What's the current status? Are we seeing the implementation of the approved plans any time soon, or has there been work done already? How can a player that isn't involved, get involved?

Hey! So far, LFM completely backs everything proposed, we just found ourselves in a little bit of ditch. In order to create the most interactive election to date, we have a developer expanding upon our in-house software to create an interactive map so that you can vote in each district. It's not an easy project, so I apologize for that! Absolutely worst case scenario, we'll revert back to an older idea of running elections through poll websites and we manually write up the statistics, but definitely not preferred!


To add onto the topic as a whole, I truly understand the points made above. But there is more to politics than just weed. Laws do help the community. Just to name a few: open carry in county, stand your ground, penal code changes, employment laws, labor laws, unions, charity fraud regulations, and so much more. Just because weed was denied in the past, it doesn't render the entire system redundant. And if it does for you, then maybe political roleplay as a whole isn't for you if weed is your only drive to stay politically aware at least.

Edited June 16, 2023 by H04X
typo

[Koko]

On 6/14/2023 at 8:43 PM, H04X said:

To add onto the topic as a whole, I truly understand the points made above. But there is more to politics than just weed. Laws do help the community. Just to name a few: open carry in county, stand your ground, penal code changes, employment laws, labor laws, unions, charity fraud regulations, and so much more. Just because weed was denied in the past, it doesn't render the entire system redundant. And if it does for you, then maybe political roleplay as a whole isn't for you if weed is your only drive to stay politically aware at least.

 

For reference, I agree with your idea behind this fundamentally, but I think we're all repeatedly going back to the weed case because it was that one case where political RP really got to the masses and it was a great, populist hook for people to find themselves involved when previously they hadn't engaged with this type of RP. The first taste of political activism RP for a lot of people in the server was cut short OOCly by IFM and was ultimately topped by a rigged election that was plain obvious. It just looked monumentally bad.

 

Of course there's legislation that matters a lot going on in the Senate, but for every open carry law there's 5 "let's celebrate Groundhog Day" or "Should the hunting hat *really* be orange?", it's all very dense forum RP, and much like real legislative efforts IRL, most people don't follow it day by day, which is why it was important that the ones people tuned into were not a complete dumpster fire. It wasn't really an issue with the weed but regular people being tempted to participate in a new avenue of RP and then seeing it was pointless.

[knppel]

On 6/14/2023 at 9:43 PM, H04X said:

'm trying to discuss with LFM so bills can be ICly vetoed for ideological purposes, adding another layer of politics to the legislative process with no real OOC drawbacks.

This would have the massive ooc drawback that people would further repeat the false fact that "any real initiative gets vetoed".

 

Without any irony, it is better and most of all realistic if politicians fold to the public after realizing some law they came up with is less well received than expected, for example, than having a setup where ultimate responsibility is pushed on a character that is practically non-existent.

It might temporarily affect a characters' approval ratings if they run into a scandal of this sort- see abortion last year- but it is perfectly possible to politically survive such a thing.

 

In stern contrast, governor intervention will affect the senate's reputation as a whole, and usually not for the better:

This is why the weed-topic gets rubbed under your noses again and again- if simply looking at from the outside and ignoring the finer diplomatic details behind this decision that most people in fact did not take part in, it looks like politicians promising something and failing to deliver.

 

It could make some interesting internal rp or create additional sentiment in a party if the governor entity stopped their agendas, yes.

It might even be possible to spin this into a tale for the own clients to make the rally around the flag.

For the broad public however, the senate will look weak if its usually long term aiming and detailed actions get vetoed just like that and they have no measures to take at all against it.

 

38 minutes ago, Koko said:

which is why it was important that the ones people tuned into were not a complete dumpster fire.

Picking up here from above:

Take in account public anticipation is tricky to predict.

 

Here's yet another risk in pre-meditating acts to be vetoed:

Imagine if for some reason the public picks up on a topic, only to then find out it was rigged from the start.

 

 

 

[pateuvasiliu]

Government/Politics RP is useless as long as they aren't allowed by the powers that be to, say, remove the 'good cause' requirement for a CCW and make it easier for civilians to own concealed permits. In real life, in such a high crime rate city, anyone who promises that would win by a landslide.

 

Or, you know, banning masks.

Our laws don't reflect the absolute insanity that is our crime rate.

 

Makes no sense that 80% of Los Santos votes republican.

Yeah it does, Republicans usually promise more gun access and harsher laws towards criminals/gangs while liberals faint at the idea of racial profiling and self defence.

If Los Angeles had our crime rate it would absolutely be Republican.

Edited June 16, 2023 by pateuvasiliu