For the economic options, I think Option C is the best. Assuming a decrease in sales tax of 20% and due to this an increase in monthly growth of total sales of 20%, the government will see an increase in monthly sales tax after nineteen months.
I think Option B is good too because the government could generate lots of investment for government led projects, but with how many investment firms going out of business and/or commiting tax evasion, I don’t think that’s the best option.
Your interpretation of Option C is what the proponents of that sort of thing tend to claim. Specifically, it’s known as the Laffer Curve - it’s referenced in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, from which the “Something D-O-O Economics” title comes.
Whether or not that’s the reality if implemented is another matter, though. Economics consists of a series of models which often have issues in their predictive power of reality, and which are replete with exceptions.
Also, I’d ideally like you to submit a proper lobbying DM, picking one option.
Just a reminder, you all have a week left to get lobbying part one in. I’ll be sending a bunch of reminders soon.
However, the latest Little Dev Update has revealed that a new open beta update will be dropping soon, just a few weeks from now. So, I will be delaying the next round to experiment with the new update a bit, see how it works and wait for the first few patches to come out. ALC4 will probably launch about 3-4 weeks after the update launches.
Forgot to send those reminders, but they were a courtesy and it’s been an odd week, what can I say? I’ve been exhausted IRL due to work, it is what it is.
The raw numbers are pretty split. 2 for option A, 4 for option B (one technically after lobbying closed), 3 for option D… And none for option C. Maybe the lack of responses for option C says something about the forum. Maybe it says something about what I wrote about it, or my known biases. What can you say?
So, which option do I go for, with split lobbying?
The option that is most interesting to me, the option where I can see the most ways to follow on from, and do the most with… Option D. Why? Well… You will see, there’s hints soon. I figure that I have some room to make these decisions, when it’s so close.
The timing of the latest election could not have placed the new government in a more precarious position. Massive revelations had sent the economy into freefall, and nobody really agreed what to do. Some, like the Modernist Party Of Araga wanted to spend more. Some, like the Aragan Stability Party wanted to spend less. A variety of other policies were advanced by a myriad of parties, most notably the Organised Labour Party. Nobody really agreed on what to do, that’s democracy for you, right? It was a long campaign, but it’s finally over.
There has perhaps been no closer election in recent memory, with the ASP, MPA and OLP all receiving between 25 and 30 of the 100 seats in the lower house. Analysts expected a long, drawn-out period of negotiations… And analysts were wrong. The MPA and OLP rapidly found common ground. Amid cries from the ASP of being shut out and the MPA caving to its left flank, the pair rapidly got to it and unveiled a coalition government. The MPA accepted the OLP-advanced policy of selective nationalisation for struggling and tax-evading firms, while the OLP allowed the MPA to take the official leadership and commited to the MPA’s platform of more open trade.
Reactions to the announcement have been mixed internationally, with some particularly inflammatory rhetoric about these moves being the first step towards anarchy and chaos coming just over the border in Windon. It seems that a spectre is haunting Windon - the spectre of communism. All the powers of their nation are entering into an alliance… But there’s a long distance between this policy and outright communism, as many said so often this election. Private property will still be around. Successful, law-abiding firms will continue as they always have. It is the role of the state to protect her people, and that is all the state wants to do - merely a new expression of the order we have seen so long.
Well, with the government nationalising companies all over the place… What does this mean for entrants? I did say you can choose to get nationalised, right? Well, let me tell you what that means and how that works:
Oh, and a final note to make publicly… If you are in the challenges channel in discord, you may have noticed people making all manner of war machines for ALC. These will be for a future round set after ALC4, so a good 3+ months out. Some ground rules on the round, however:
Okay, been a little while, but it’s time for spending! An important change, all spending amounts are being multiplied by 10. This means that the base amount per round is 100 spending tokens, extra lobbying power costs 70 tokens (for now) and you can retain up to 30 points. If you had 2 tokens held from last round, you will now have 20 tokens. This is preparation for a new system next round, where you will be able to get more points. Now, to lobbying options.
There are a two important questions to address. Your lobbying power will not be diluted by submitting opinions on each of these points. They’re both tax, because of course.
An innovation from the world of aircraft is starting to be developed from cars - turbine-driven forced aspiration, capable of putting far higher volumes of air into the cylinders of the engine than would normally be possible. This presents an interesting quandry to the government. How do displacement taxes work when manufacturers can put extra air into their engines? There are several options:
So, let’s get down to basic facts, shall we? Taxes are going up. That’s unavoidable, that’s going to happen, we can’t avoid that. The government is intending to tax and spend, so taxes are going up. The real question is, how will we actually handle it?
Okay, so, time to discuss an important question: How will techpool work.
For reasons, you will only be spending on schools for now. If you have other questions, feel free to ask them!
I am guessing you meant october 
No, don’t you have a time machine?
Editing now.
What’s a spending token idk what to do with the spending tokens 
You have 100 tokens to allocate to spending on various things - education this round, but it’ll be stuff like infrastructure, racing and other projects too. You can choose to allocate them however you like, and can retain up to 30 tokens between rounds.
For the taxes I think taxing rich people car is best because rich people have tons of money, and tax high displacement engines but have an exemption for utility vehicles. I don’t like taxing turbos because turbos are a new innovation I think it’d be really cool to see what kinds of news vehicles people create now that we have turbos 
I have another tax idea too!!! An emissions/fuel efficiency tax. A tax with a negative correlation to emissions and fuel efficiency. Maybe have a flat tax for every car below a certain MPG number, or a progressive tax that increases the lower the MPG.
We could also tax sports cars if we wanted too. Maybe a flat tax if a car has sport compound tires, or a tax based on wheel width (utility vehicle exemption of course).
Please send those in DMs, if that is how you want to lobby.
So will spending and lobbying be open to all who have previously entered this challenge, or will it be limited to only those who entered the last round?
For the schools, I think industrial design is the best. It has many uses outside of just car manufacturing, and also applies to other industries such as railway building and machine tooling. Plus most industrial factories will benefit from industrial design. This is especially useful with the nationalization of car companies. Industrial design will help achieve greater efficiency and throughput.
Also interested to see what effects ‘Art’ has.
Lobbying is only open to people who participated in the latest round, because I don’t want to create a situation where a bunch of people are lobbying with no intent to continue participating.
Hey all did you see the tech school lobbying! Real interesting stuff. I’m sure you’re all carefully deciding which school to invest into. This is a big decision after all! Which is the most effective school to invest into is the question you’re all asking, and for that question, I have an answer! Indeed, with the power of mathematics I have determined the most efficient and cost effective school! Do you know want to know which it is! Well I’ll start with the least efficient when it comes to tech pool. It’s art of course.
Before I tell you the most efficient school, let me explain something someone might have missed. You see that each school has a value of either 13, 16, or 17. Each school then adds value to a different tech pool category. For example, mechanical engineering has 6 points of value into ‘Engine Architecture’. This value is then converted into tech pool points in a ratio unknown to us. Now if the value converted into tech pool points was equal between all categories, then the tech schools with a value of 17 would be ever more efficient to invest into then the ones with 16. But that is not the case! Each tech category has a different ratio for converting value into tech pool points! You see, engine architecture needs 20 value to improve tech pool, whereas bottom end only needs 5. This means that if 20 investment points are put into improving each of engine architecture and bottom end, engine architecture would improve tech pool by 1 point, and bottom end by 4! That’s 4 times the efficiency!
Now with that explanation, let me get onto the results! Here is each tech category in ascending order by amount of tech pool points per investment, and that value for each category.
| Tech school | Tech pool points per 1 investment |
|---|---|
| Art | 1.533333333 |
| Electrical Engineering | 1.733333333 |
| Materials Science | 1.75 |
| Mechanical Engineering | 1.8 |
| Chemical Engineering | 1.95 |
| Industrial Design | 2.2 |
| Aeronautics | 2.333333333 |
| Pure Physics | 2.7 |
With a whopping 2.7, pure physics is by far the most efficient school to invest into! Very fun. Pure physics also has the most points into aspiration, which will make turbochargers cheaper to make!
But we also need to think about the other stuff each school will give! Pure physics is very useful as physics is important and will lead to scientific discoveries and inventions and stuff being made in Araga! Cool! Industrial design will help manufacture these inventions! So I think it would be best to invest in both pure physics and industrial design!
I hope this explanation has been of use to you in deciding which school to invest your spending tokens in!
I wouldn’t normally correct someone on stuff like this, but your analysis misses something pretty important: Some techpool is worth more than others. A free point of quality in engine architecture will often be as impactful as four free points in bottom end (and sometimes more impactful).
The discussion has been had elsewhere about how much different sorts of techpool are worth. This sort of thing is why challenges with free allocation that treat every area identically have had balance issues.
If you want to value one point in engine architecture identically to one point in bottom end, be my guest. You shouldn’t though. With the exception of art, all the schools are designed to be roughly as useful as one another. I couldn’t find more uses for art in techpool, which is why it lags behind.
Don’t worry, my math checks out, it needs no correction!
OH, BOY! November 18th, 1969 sure is a great day for cruising around in my HAMFA 3000 that I bought with cash one year after starting my first white-collar job! I sure hope I won’t still be driving it in 2023 with a million miles on the odometer and a Chinese diesel under the hood!
Without sharing further details about MWara’s investment plans, let’s just say Pure Physics is one of two schools I am not going to make any investment in (and the other one is excluded more from a RP standpoint than a grounded / rational one)…
