You are on a ship, far from land. It appears to be taking on water. There are a thousand passengers, from whom they select a captain before each eight hour shift. Any one captain may only serve two shifts. The captain has some leeway to decide what to do, but unlike a normal ship, the policy is actually set by the crew, who are elected to represent various portions of the ship. There are also a group of nine passengers who decide whether the captain and crew are correctly following the crew's policy. They can be replaced if they get tired of the job and quit or die in office.
Activities on the ship include partying, bailing water, inspecting the hull for leaks, and repairing holes.
The passengers are divided into factions who believe the ship is not taking on water, those who believe it is taking on water but it's happening slowly and won't be a problem for a long time, and those who believe that only immediate action from most of the passengers can prevent the ship from sinking.
I was hoping fishing would be suggested, that’s where I come in…
You see in order to fish, you need:
1) to learn to fish with the proper fishing education. I’ll set that up and teach you but it will cost you. You will pay with 33% of the fish you catch for the remainder of your life.
2) a rod And bait following your education. I’ll also supply that, but again it will cost you. Since you can’t pay up front, I’ll extend you credit, and you will also pay as a percent of future fish. This time with a Variable Interest Rate up to 25% as permitted by the crews’ usury laws (after all we wouldn’t want you being exploited).
3. permit applications, and lucky for you I’ll help you with that also, but there is the matter of my fee as well as the fee for the permit which must be paid annually. As a courtesy I’ll waive my fee so long as you give me the first 100 fish you catch as a second in line creditor to the permit office which gets the first 50 fish you catch.
4. Taxes for the luxury of being on the ship and fishing from the ship. These are progressive taxes to make this fair for you and so taxes are determined by the total number of fish you catch. It’ll be somewhere between 10%-40% of your fish. Technically you could pay 0%, but the bad news is you’ll starve to death if you pay 0%. Note if you mess up the calculations there are extra penalties and fees, and potential jail time if you are found intentionally cheating on your fish taxes. Once again you’ll probably want my services to figure out your fish taxes, because let’s face it, I specialize in counting/managing your fish & you’ll need every minute to dedicate to fishing if you ever plan to have something to eat for yourself.
Roughly you will owe about 98% of every fish you catch to creditors and taxes, this is after the first 150 fish which come right off the top.
Due to historical reasons there are several people on the boat who actually own 90% of all the fish in the ocean. If you catch a fish, you pay them 90% of the value of the fish.
$19.99 for the fishing DLC season pass to reduce my fishing tax to 1%. Golden rod (premium) that blinds fish into taking the bait and other fishermen away from my $49.99 DLC instanced fishing spot. No rod tax (premium), and a discount on next seasons fishing big bad bass DLC 2.
>Note if you mess up the calculations there are extra penalties and fees, and potential jail time if you are found intentionally cheating on your fish taxes. Once again you’ll probably want my services to figure out your fish taxes
Don't forget, the fish tax collection agency already knows how many fish you've caught, but won't tell you what they think your numbers are. Instead, you need to independently provide your numbers and hope they match. Or you can hire one of their "partners" who will help you file your fish taxes correctly, for a fee...
You left out the part where the group that believes immediate action is the only way to prevent the ship from sinking, continually suggests immediate actions that will likely have no actual effect on the rate the ship is sinking, but will drastically affect the ability of the ship’s poorest people to meet their basic necessities.
The leaders of that group can even periodically fly their private helicopters off the ship, to meet and discuss how great they are for keeping the ship from sinking, even though the weight of the helicopters is helping it sink faster.
Exactly. You need a small-to-medium sized faction that runs around with drills, making more holes in the ship, either for the lulz or to irritate the side that believes we're taking on water.
Funny how, when I originally read OP's game, I thought he was talking about COVID response, but then realized he was probably talking about climate change. It's spooky how no matter what the crisis is, we seem to collectively respond to it in the same futile, guaranteed-to-fail way.
It reminds me of a big swathe of survival and/or base building games where you have to balance out things just right, or real life games like Werewolves.
Now I'm imagining a variant of Werewolf where only a handful of the players even know how many werewolves there were at the start, possibly zero, and there are also non-werewolf causes of death.
Will the villagers wipe themselves out in a witch-hunt?
It's closest to a "hidden role" game, like werewolf or Town of Salem.
There's a general task that everyone (often even called a "crew" in space based flavors) has to complete to win, but there are people who are essentially secret saboteurs who are trying to complete a different objective that often explicitly causes the rest of the players to lose.
Look up Secret Hitler, which explicitly has you voting for government leader, different factions, and voting for which actions to take as a government. Your goal as the crew is to vote for democracy or uncover hitler, and your goal as hitler or a facist is to do facism.
You are on an internet forum. You are attempting to describe a very complex societal issue in very simple terms, using an analogy. Your description lefts out many important details and other present or potential problems, as you concentrate on a single issue. In your description, all democratic checks and balances are effectively portrayed as stupid and time-wasting. You end up with apologia for fascism.
Most catastrophic thinking is related to climate change, though of course it could also be referring to the inevitable end of the solar system as the sun expands.
I thought most catastrophic thinking would be related to personal minutiae. That's why its "catastrophic thinking". Changes to the global climate and the systemic and societal upheaval in response to those changes are significant.
Could be just the general deadlock and inability to come to consensus about any long term future threats. Could be AI, climate change, housing crisis, China, etc. But you’re right, likely climate change.
In the USA, isn't it the fascists and proto-fascists that are the ones denying climate change? I don't think there's any ecofascism movement there at all.
The premise of this ship analogy seems to be that most people are too idiotic to make large-scale decisions and that the people who agree with OP should be in charge of everything.
Ah, I can see it. I feel like it's more a criticism specifically of US civics (a direct shot at the supreme court for example) and US anti-intellectualism (some of the passengers believe the boat isn't sinking at all), but pulling back from that context and I see how it could be seen as apologia for various forms of nonrepresentative government.
Right. A operating a ship is a terrible analogy to operating a society because it's primarily a technical operation that requires leadership to make split second decisions that everyone follows. Obviously, a Supreme Court is worse than useless in such a context.
The fact that you are feeling confident making such assumption just because I disapproved an ship-gaining-water analogy is exactly the problem with public discourse I wanted to highlight.
Activities on the ship include partying, bailing water, inspecting the hull for leaks, and repairing holes.
The passengers are divided into factions who believe the ship is not taking on water, those who believe it is taking on water but it's happening slowly and won't be a problem for a long time, and those who believe that only immediate action from most of the passengers can prevent the ship from sinking.
Good luck.