Proposal for Elections

Come here to voice your comments, concerns, and questions with the mayor and their aides!

Do you approve or disapprove of the above proposal?

Poll ended at Sun Oct 02, 2016 9:54 am

Approve
5
56%
Disapprove
4
44%
No opinion
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 9

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Dredge
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Post by Dredge »

SirWhit wrote:You realize that the rich have no influence in the election fee? That's decided soley by Catspaw.
...certain movers and shakers on the board have commented, that, in part, one of the reasons prices to make it onto the ballot are so doggone high is because we must be certain that a candidate would have high levels of support, and, in effect, it would be better to have one sincere team than alot of joke teams on the ballot.

I won't comment on what this says about the site being discussed here. What I will say is that this mindset would have been fine when we had 80 or 90 or even 100+ users voting and donating money and leadership didn't have a somewhat insightful knowledge of every voter, but that is no longer the case. Because some users were here in the interest era, only one team usually gets onto the ballot, and usually only with the support of the Fat Cats and a few mortals. The many poor, on the other hand, really don't have a say and therefore have no influence.

In response to your second question, the solution here is not redistribution or class warfare. One can't get off one's "butt and make money" because it's like opening up an ice cream shop in the Anarctic. I'm fairly certain that if I asked the top 5 users in Crestwood how much they made in the past week, or month, or probably year, most of them would have made less than $10. Therefore, the solution is to acknowledge that interest is screwing up how the price to become mayor is set.

I hope you see where I'm going with this.
The solution is to discount any interest earned from the final tally of how much bank holdings exist in the market. Then, we will have an accurate reading on how much everyone can contribute, not just the wealthy. Besides, we don't have a wealth of the wealthy here anyway.
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bookworm
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Post by bookworm »

I just explained that interest has nothing to do with how board cash is currently dispersed, you proceed to bring it up six more times in your next two posts. Try to listen this time.

To my knowledge the interest feature has never been functional with phpbb3, it is a remnant of the original implementation of our cash mod back on the phpbb2 board. That means that the only time people could have done this stockpiling of interest you insist they did was while we were on phpbb2. However, when the board was upgraded from phpbb2 to phpbb3 the mods were reset, resulting in the cash of all members being reset to $0.
Now on phpbb3 with everyone at zero money and no one with access to working interest, everyone was made financially level and had the exact same opportunities to build or spend their cash as they wished going forward. Your alleged conspiracy to make the rich rich and prevent the rest from following never happened, and in fact could not have happened. It's not a technological possibility.

And speaking for my own holdings since I seem to be a key part of your obsession, I can tell you with certainty that not a cent of my cash was accumulated through interest. I was in the height of my hiatus when the phpbb3 upgrade took place, resetting my cash while I was completely unaware. My money has been hard earned through 5+ years of constant posting and event participation ever since I returned.
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Post by snubs »

Again... taking things waaay too seriously.. @Amerigo Primero

I don't think it's worth responding to you anymore because you just keep rambling on about the same things without actually responding or addressing anyone else's comments.
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Dredge
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Post by Dredge »

bookworm wrote:I just explained that interest has nothing to do with how board cash is currently dispersed, you proceed to bring it up six more times in your next two posts. Try to listen this time.

To my knowledge the interest feature has never been functional with phpbb3, it is a remnant of the original implementation of our cash mod back on the phpbb2 board. That means that the only time people could have done this stockpiling of interest you insist they did was while we were on phpbb2. However, when the board was upgraded from phpbb2 to phpbb3 the mods were reset, resulting in the cash of all members being reset to $0.
Now on phpbb3 with everyone at zero money and no one with access to working interest, everyone was made financially level and had the exact same opportunities to build or spend their cash as they wished going forward. Your alleged conspiracy to make the rich rich and prevent the rest from following never happened, and in fact could not have happened. It's not a technological possibility.

And speaking for my own holdings since I seem to be a key part of your obsession, I can tell you with certainty that not a cent of my cash was accumulated through interest. I was in the height of my hiatus when the phpbb3 upgrade took place, resetting my cash while I was completely unaware. My money has been hard earned through 5+ years of constant posting and event participation ever since I returned.
That's not to say that people who accumulated interest didn't earn it, but then the proverbial tide went out. Thank you for your input...

@Snubs... I love you people, I do, I do. Which is why I am posting. Really.
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Post by bookworm »

Amerigo Primero wrote:That's not to say that people who accumulated interest didn't earn it, but then the proverbial tide went out.
Did you read anything I wrote? The 'tide went out' on everyone; all cash was reset. So there was not a section of people who had money earned up from interest and another section who didn't have that and couldn't get it. Everyone started over from the same place.
Amerigo Primero wrote:I'm not saying there was lewd interest involved. I'm saying that the people who could get rich got rich, then interest went away
Yes I understand what you're saying, and it is completely inaccurate as already explained.
Amerigo Primero wrote:I won't speculate on motivation, but I will say that it's probably difficult for someone so fabulously wealthy to level with the concerns of Odyssey's mortal population. ... The rich people can't level with the poor people, and that's why the rich people can't see the benefits of my idea. ... I love you two rich people! I do, I do. But there's no way you're gonna be able to come down to the poor, not-so-powerful people's level on this.
If I thought you were entirely serious about all this I would be very offended by these statements. I don't know if anyone cares about this place quite the way I do. I don't say that in arrogance or meaning I think others don't care as much as I do, but the way I think about and care about this community is I think unique and I know deeply sincere and from a very special place in my heart. So the assertion that the amount of virtual money I've gathered over the (many, many) years I've been involved in it somehow prevents me from wanting the best for the whole site is very hurtful.
Amerigo Primero wrote:Just look at yourselves! When the tide was in, you got uber-rich
I have already told you how thoroughly false this is. Again, I was on hiatus when the cash was reset and had to build myself back up from nothing when I returned. There was absolutely no 'tide' I rode to where I am. I maintained years of constant activity and community involvement to earn my money. And I'll add it wasn't done for the money, that just came along with the activity.
Amerigo Primero wrote:we can't get rich like you, because interest is "broken"
As I already stated interest played no part in my riches whatsoever, so this statement is entirely false.
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Post by Old Brad »

The rich are rich because, quite simply, they put time and effort into the board. You'll notice that bookworm has nearly 13,000 posts. A large portion of his posts are lengthy, not just a couple sentences. I happen to also know that he frequents the raffle. :p

There's an old adage that I feel is appropriate, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." There really is nothing wrong with the current set up of the elections, therefore there is no real need to change anything about it.
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Post by Dredge »

If I thought you were entirely serious about all this I would be very offended by these statements. I don't know if anyone cares about this place quite the way I do. I don't say that in arrogance or meaning I think others don't care as much as I do, but the way I think about and care about this community is I think unique and I know deeply sincere and from a very special place in my heart. So the assertion that the amount of virtual money I've gathered over the (many, many) years I've been involved in it somehow prevents me from wanting the best for the whole site is very hurtful.
I'm not saying you don't want the best, man! No one has our back out there like you. What I'm saying is this: when you're rich, you don't know what it is to be poor, so you're looking at the same goal from another location. You can't see it from the direction of the poor, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's about perspective. I don't actually think you care about the green as much as you do the ToO. But having said that, you won't be able to smell the same coffee close to 56% of the ToO smells.
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Post by bookworm »

Amerigo Primero wrote:
bookworm wrote:You're assuming having single ticket elections is always a negative thing or sign of some problem.
I can because it means that, for lack of a better term, the rich fat cats spent up money to make sure the majority were surpressed
What you're saying then is the reason single team elections are bad is because only rich members are able to finance teams, so only the teams the rich members want on the ballot make the ballot? That is utterly untrue. You grossly miscalculate the amount of money available to general fundraising. The entry fees do appear high at times, to initial reaction, but in practice they are not unreasonable. There is in fact plenty of money to go around for elections, the teams are not at the mercy of a handful of rich members to get them on the ballot, the combined donations of every member can adequately support them.

It's not money that results in single team ballots. Not lack of money to donate that is. It's lack of money that is donated. But not by shortage, by choice. The only time a one team election would be a negative thing is when it comes about as the result of only one team entering the race due to lack of interest or other factors preventing additional teams from forming. But that is not the usual case. How we have usually reached one team tickets is multiple teams announce their intention to run, but only one ends up making it onto the ballot. This is not bad, it can be caused my many factors and circumstances.

The most common is what has been the case the majority of the time I believe, where the team that makes the ballot first is the one the majority wanted (logical, since the team you most want is going to be the first one you donate to), so there's no impetus to then get other teams on. That is, you can only be a supporter of one team, so if they become the first to raise the fee and make the ballot you aren't going to assist additional teams in making it on after them. Once your team is in your cares are over until the vote. But if you do want one of the other teams to get in, as I said there is still enough money available to bring that about. So again, the situation we have had is where multiple teams do start out, but only one ends up raising the funds required to continue. But not because of lack of funds to support all the teams, rather from lack of desire for whatever reason from various parties to spread said funds to all the other teams. That is not a bad thing. There is no problem here.
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Post by Dredge »

Hmmm... That actually makes kind of alot of sense. In other words, giving money to candidates is better than actually voting because you can get someone on the ballot, which goes a loooooong way.
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Post by bookworm »

Amerigo Primero wrote:Hmmm... That actually makes kind of alot of sense. In other words, giving money to candidates is better than actually voting because you can get someone on the ballot, which goes a loooooong way.
Exactly. The donation to get a team onto the ballot is actually the most significant part of supporting them, not, as one might think, your vote for them in the election itself. I have actually written a whole dissertation on this.
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Post by Marvin D. »

Now, now.

This sounds too much like the whole real world "omgosh capitalism 4 lyfe!!1 signle mums stop taking money" vs the "HAHAH free money lol yh socialism!!1" paradigm.

How about we not \:D/
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Post by Dredge »

Marvin D. wrote:Now, now.

This sounds too much like the whole real world "omgosh capitalism 4 lyfe!!1 signle mums stop taking money" vs the "HAHAH free money lol yh socialism!!1" paradigm.

How about we not \:D/
Well,in real life, I'm the former, but with a rugged populist edge.
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Post by Marvin D. »

:(
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Post by Tea Ess »

:mope:
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