We are working on a brand new version of the game! If you want to stay informed, read our blog and register for our mailing list.
Bill: SPV - 1 Economic Reform Act
Details
Submitted by[?]: Socialist Party of Vorona
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: February 4732
Description[?]:
| BE IT ENACTED BY THE HOUSE OF COMMONS PREAMBLE: Whereas noticing some defects in the economic procedures of our nations, and since for the benefit of the majority the present policies in the economic sector are not sufficient, SECTION 1: This bill is the SPV - 1 Economic Reform Act. SECTION 2: It shall now be a national law to ensure everywhere that closed shops, union shops and agency shops are legal. SECTION 3: Cryptocurrency shall be illegal. SECTION 4: Banks and financial institutions may charge interest on loans which shall be regulated by the government so that no one is charged such interest which goes out of the scope of the borrower. SECTION 5: There shall be no stance on salary cap. An individual must earn according to his contribution and work. SECTION 6: All enterprises, under their most scope, are required to cover basic payroll contributions for their employees. SECTION 7: The government shall encourage positive discrimination and shall enforce it for government hiring. SECTION 8: The government shall own the stock exchange. SECTION 9: All business shall be run by Democratic Workers' Councils. SECTION 10: This bill becomes a law as soon as the House of Commons passes this bill with a majority. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Closed shops are places of employment where only members of a specific union are allowed to work; union shops can hire non-members, but these have to become members after a certain time; agency shops can hire non-members, who have to pay a fee to cover the unions costs. All three are erected by union agreements. (Only valid if unions are legal)
Old value:: This issue is decided by local governments.
Current: Only open shops are legal.
Proposed: Closed shops, union shops and agency shops are legal.
Article 2
Proposal[?] to change Government policy on cryptocurrency.
Old value:: Cryptocurrency is legal and regulated, select private institutions can issue cryptocurrency.
Current: The government has no policy on cryptocurrency
Proposed: Cryptocurrency is illegal.
Article 3
Proposal[?] to change Policy on the charging and collection of interest on loans
Old value:: The central bank determines the policy on charging interest on loans (if one exists)
Current: The government has no policy on the charging of interest on loans
Proposed: Banks and financial institutions charge interest on loans and are regulated
Article 4
Proposal[?] to change The government's stance on a salary cap.
Old value:: There is a national maximum wage but local governments may enforce stricter salary caps.
Current: The government has no stance on a salary cap.
Proposed: The government has no stance on a salary cap.
Article 5
Proposal[?] to change A law on employers' obligations with regards to social security contributions.
Old value:: Payroll contributions are not mandatory but the government grants tax incentives to providers.
Current: Payroll contributions are not mandatory but the government grants tax incentives to providers.
Proposed: All enterprises are required to cover basic payroll contributions for their employees.
Article 6
Proposal[?] to change The government's position towards the stock exchange(s).
Old value:: This is left to the local governments.
Current: The government has no position on the proliferation of stock exchanges.
Proposed: The government owns the stock exchange(s).
Article 7
Proposal[?] to change Positive discrimination.
Old value:: Hiring policies are regulated by local governments.
Current: The government does not regulate hiring policies.
Proposed: The government encourages positive discrimination and enforces it for government hiring.
Article 8
Proposal[?] to change Government policy on Democratic Workers' Councils.
Old value:: The government requires most industries to be fully run by Democratic Workers' Councils.
Current: The government does not intervene in the marketplace with regards to Democratic Workers' Councils.
Proposed: The government requires all businesses to be run by Democratic Workers' Councils.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 14:07:26, March 26, 2020 CET | From |  Liberal Conservative Union | To | Debating the SPV - 1 Economic Reform Act |
| Message | *Media Release* The Liberal Conservative Union opposes SPV-1 Economic Reform Act, as we view that the majority of the articles proposed will have a negative effect on the economy and goes against our principles of ensuring we have a freer market which will unleash human flourishing and enable job creations. However the Liberal Conservative Union does support Articles 3 and 4 and will introduce a seperate policy proposals on these issues. |
| Date | 19:09:20, March 26, 2020 CET | From | Socialist Party of Vorona | To | Debating the SPV - 1 Economic Reform Act |
| Message | Mr Speaker, The Liberal Conservative Union is condemning this bill of distorting the free market which will harm the economy and creation of jobs. But I stand in opposition with this. Let us first look at our proposed bill, the first article says closed shops, union shops and agency shops are legal. In our country, a law is in force that every employee must become a member of any union operating on our soil. I think this is a very good step and this article shall ensure it as a national law if this bill comes to force. First of all union shops create some benefits in the economy. Labor unions can provide a stable and well-trained workforce. Often, unions have their own programs to train employees in their trades, taking the burden off employers. With properly trained employees, you’ll have a safer work environment, resulting in fewer days lost due to work-related injuries or illnesses. Keep in mind you’ll have union assurance that more workers will be available if needed. Also since union workers operate under labor contracts, employers can more accurately predict labor costs. This allows employers to focus on more strategic initiatives like expanding operations, investing in new product development and controlling labor costs. Today, the private sector plays a pivotal role in our society and shall do so in an underdeveloped country. The unions represent the workers. It keeps the workers united and organized. Today we emphasize on unions as to ensure that the workers can work in a secure and social environment not depriving of them of their basic rights. I think in this way, our economy will run more efficiently. This policy today is decided by local governments but we want to make this a nationwide policy for ensuring security to all workers which will in turn increase their productivity. Moving on to the second article. Well the Liberal Conservative Union is saying our bill will harm the economy, they only supported Articles 3 and 4 and opposed the rest. So they also opposed our proposal of bainning the cryptocurrency. Rather I should say cryptocurrency is quiet detrimental to society. I know some socialists also argue that cryptocurrency is good for the economy and people. But this cannot be the case and is a quiet an ignorant argument for cryptocurrencies. For acquiring cryptocurrencies, we need to mine. So it would constitute a of waste of resources and labour and would unnecessarily contribute to carbon dioxide emissions. some cryptocurrencie's aim is to break away, as the advocates see it, from a state monopoly of the issue of currency and a dependence on the international clearing bank system of payment. The idea that these cryptocurrencies will replace our currency is based on a fundamental misconception of why state monies circulate. State currencies circulate because they are the unit that must be used to pay taxes. So long as this continues their circulation will be primary and the cryptocurrecnies and its like will be remain at the level of speculative hedges, much as gold still is. What we need to realize that it is better to keep the paper money now. In a purely socialist economy, where labour credits will replace money, we don't need to use paper credit cards but can use a software. The shop, being publicly run would not be a business running for profit, so it would not need to be credited with money. The shop would not buy in goods from a wholesaler because the warehouses and factories that the goods came from would also be publicly run. In consequence there would be no transfer of ownership between factory, warehouse and supermarket, and thus no need for a chain of payments. Anyways, let's move on to Article 5. We insist that payroll contributions are to be covered by employers according to their scope. This is to ensure maximum social security in the private sector. We already free healthcare and education, besides if some basic payroll contributions are made by the employers, the employee can subsist productively and emotionally well at this very stage which will ensure higher productivity. The employers according to their scope will cover the contributions. We already have profit sharing programmes, on top of that, at this very stage, if we introduce this policy, I think it will help the society. The next article says that the government shall own the stock exchange. Sometimes we have seen that a market economy fluctuates. A collapse in share prices has the potential to cause widespread economic disruption. It is possible to nationalize a stock exchange, that is, the marketplace where buyers and sellers of stock are matched. This is a business like any other, and could be government-run. So if the government interves here, the stock exchange will function efficiently and have less bad impacts on the economy. The next section tells that the government shall encourage positive discrimination. Yes it should. How can it even harm the economy? The classes once which were exploited will get a place in the society. The government, by introducing this policy, will ensure that no one gets disctiminated. So I don't understand the problem here. Lastly, we say that all businesses shall be run by Democratic Workers' Councils. It is the best way in which a private workplace becomes democratic and there will be an understanding with the employer when they get recognized. Opposing them is a bad idea, supporting them will improve the functioning of our economy. Thank You. David Williams MP representing South Gatford |
| Date | 04:02:43, March 27, 2020 CET | From | Liberal Conservative Union | To | Debating the SPV - 1 Economic Reform Act |
| Message | *Media Statement by Anna Hardgraves* Ladies and Gentlemen of the press. I'd like to respond to the statements made by Mr David Williams who seems to be purporting as a Member of Parliament. There are no Socialist MPs, just like there are no LCU MPs, we only have one party in the House of Commons and that is the Green Party. Moving on from that. The Socialists seem to have little if any knowledge about how free markets operate and what really constitutes personal wealth creation. On the first Article, The LCU understand that unions play an important role in employee representation. The issue that the LCU had was the creation of closed shops which will not only shut out potential employees who may wish to work but not join a union but also the establishment of closed shops could force non-union workers to either have to join a union or lose their job. I and many party members have no objection to allowing unions to operate their own workspaces but they should accommodate and not discriminate against workers who wish not to join a union. I was a member of the nurses union, the representaitve bullied me into joining and the union refused to help me when needed them most in regards to pay. (OOC: something similar actually happened to me in real-life, however I was working at a couple of years McDonalds ago during high school and in Australia the Retail Union and McDonald's made a gross deal which actually reduced pay of casuals, ). I will deal with both Articles 5 and 6 together, The LCU opposed both as we believe the government has no right to dictate to private business how to run their organisations. An imposition of a payroll tax on business will not only place more necessary red-tape but will have the result of reduced business growth which could impact on employment. I Know that the socialists are concerned with social welfare, they should be assured by our Government that we already have a welfare system in place. The only reason they want to introduce a payroll tax is their ideological attack on private enterprise. Our opposition to Article 7 is pretty self-evident. We argue that its individuals and private enterprise that sells goods and services to individuals are better judges of stock then the bureaucrats in the capital's elite political bubble, where they are out of touch with day to day issues and don't know how markets work. Finally on Article 8, as said prior,we believe that Government shouldn't be telling business how to run. We have no issues with Democratic Workers Councils, however we are of the belief that they should be formed voluntarily. This will ensure that Small Businesses which are run by mostly families and only employ at most a couple (if any) employees, continue to operate and are able to actually open without the burden regulatory red tape. Thank you, Anna Hardgraves, Leader of the Liberal conservative Union Nurse |
| Date | 06:41:15, March 27, 2020 CET | From | Socialist Party of Vorona | To | Debating the SPV - 1 Economic Reform Act |
| Message | Mr Speaker, The LCU is now opposing are arguments and is saying that we know a little or no about the free market. Well they oppose our notions in favour of a closed shop. The article says that closed shops, union shops and agency shops shall be legal. We are in fact proposing that the three types of shops can be legal. We support the closed shops, but our bill doesn't really force that only closed shops shall be legal. There can be all three types of shops. Sol let us vest the power of decision making in both; the employer and the Democratic Worker's Councils. They will democratically decide what will suite them best. So is there any problem? I don't see show. The workmen and the employer will decide. We also have a very beautiful law already where two-thirds of an executive board is represented by employees. So our bill will instead enhance the democratic life of the enterprises. Next their argument against articles 5 and 6 is that we are forcing the employers to do something. We aren't independently allowing them to operate. Our bill said that the employer shall cover basic payroll contributions within his scope. The government may invest in social welfare but if the employer within his scope also do this, it will be better. In a capitalist economy, the profit depends on the extraction of the surplus value, which is unjust, so how can this policy harm the private sector? Next is they oppose Article 7. Public ownership of the means of production can be achieved in the same way private ownership is achieved in modern capitalism, using the shareholder system that effectively separates management from ownership. This posits that social ownership can be achieved by having a public body, , own the shares of publicly listed firms without affecting market-based allocation of capital inputs. Pragmatic market socialism and argued that it would be at least as efficient as modern-day capitalism while providing superior social outcomes as public ownership would enable profits to be distributed among the entire population rather than going largely to a class of inheriting rentiers. We have often seen stock market fails. The fact is that it very much goes out of control when it is privately owned. Its monopoly power. The very big companies are making big money, and then sitting on the cash and buying back their own shares. As a result, stock prices rise even though investment in the real economy stagnates or falls. There is no doubt that this is part of the explanation. But the other part relates to the very low interest rates that operate across the board in the major economies. Central banks in many economies have driven interest rates into negative territory, so banks are being paid to borrow money and in turn they must offer very low rates to companies and households, particularly the large companies. stock prices generally have a lot less to do with the state of the economy or its future prospects than many people believe. In some ways the stock market’s gains reflect economic weaknesses, not strengths. And understanding how that works may help us make sense of the troubling state our economy is in. The availability of stocks to individual workers (and particularly as an only means of retirement/savings that is viable) is a way to increase surplus-value extraction. It is an obfuscated way to take a portion of the value which would normally constitute a portion of wage and defer payment in the interests of value production generally, i.e. to put that additional portion of the wage back into capital development. Because this takes place in the way of finance capital, it essentially operates as a form of "business credit," artificially maintaining the monetary value with no real connection to actual value. The same way that an individual could have a really high credit score and very high lines of credit without the requisite assets to actually back it up. It is a temporary solution to the underlying failures of capitalism that, without it, would manifest in diminishing conditions for the economy and, thus, people generally. The main problem is that 1 share = 1 vote as opposed to 1 person = 1 vote. So one very rich person can end up with a million shares and therefore a million votes and drown out the voice of every other person. In order for this framework of stocks to empower workers it would really have to enforce a 1 person 1 vote system. Note that you could technically still use number of shares as a financial instrument, but just not as a voting instrument. Also note that every worker need not really vote on everything either, they could, for example, elect representatives from within their ranks. (All socialism is is the democratization of the work place, so whatever democratic schemes we've imagined in politics could apply). But also note that those representative have to come from the bottom up, not assigned to them from the board of directors or top down. In a very real sense, if we approach the socialist means of production idea from a political science perspective, all it is is a conceptualization of corporate citizenship. Who gets to be a "citizen" of the company, who gets to vote? Is your citizenship based on where you were born like national citizenship is often done? Can you be born into a company? Not really. Does just anybody who works for the company be allowed to vote? Should a subcontractor, who is a separate company, have voting rights? Unlikely. So this idea of workers owning the means of production, that ownership relation is what would define a worker's voting rights. Stocks can be that relationship, but it would require a 1 person 1 vote framework. Whatever the fluctuation in stock prices, eventually the value of a company must be judged by investors for its ability to make profits. A company’s stock price can get way out of line with the accumulated value of its stock of real assets or its earnings, but eventually the price will be dragged back into line. Indeed, if we consider stock price indexes (i.e. an index of an aggregated group of individual stock prices) over the long term, they exhibit clear cycles, with up phases called bull markets and down phases called bear markets. And these bull and bear markets, at least in the US, match nicely the movement in the rate of profit But abolishing stock market now will be erroneous. It will be better if we actually make the citizens own the stock market in the primary stage of socialism. Now Article 8. They are opposing as they tell that the government shouldn't tell how businesses. The Democratic Workers' Councils is a collective body of workers. It is quiet necessary in agency shops. The Democratic Workers' Councils ensure that the interests of the employees are also represented in the running of a business. If it doesn't exist, their collective power may get weakened and then it will cause some insecurity. Today, we need market to industrialize the country. The DWCs will not oppose the employer, but will ensure that the employer doesn't work on his whims only but also thinks about the employees. Is this any problem? I don't think so. Lastly, they said I am not a MP. I was elected in a by election. Didn't they see that? OOC: The game says that since you are able to debate in the parliament with no seats, it is probably that you have been elected in a by election. Thank You. David Williams MP Representing South Gatford. |
subscribe to this discussion - unsubscribe
Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||
| yes | Total Seats: 399 | ||
| no | Total Seats: 0 | ||
| abstain |
Total Seats: 0 |
| Random fact: Treaties will be eligible for deletion if they are more than 50 in-game years old and have no currently ratified members. |
| Random quote: "Only the educated are free." - Epictetus |