[sigtau]

Brought this up in IRC earlier, but it received no attention, so I'll whore for attention here. 

What if we were able to take all of the mainstream American political extremities--liberal, conservative, libertarian, green, constitution (source)--and see whose managerial skills actually prevail as being the most effective, even on a virtual scale?

Basic jist of the idea (and really, it's a basic pitch subject to massive changes): What if we took people who identify with each of the aforementioned political extremes--say, ten people per party (each would have to be subjected to some kind of political test to verify where they stand)--and then test their managerial skills with a game of SimCity 4?*  Players would be allowed time to practice playing the game outside of the survey, but when the survey actually occurs, they would be allowed 4-5 hours to complete a medium-sized city, and after this time is up, they will be graded on scales such as quality of life in their city (based on education, health, pollution, and employment data), balancing of budget and taxes (how skewed are the tax brackets, is the city in debt, is the city in a deficit spending mode, were any loans taken out), quality of infrastructure (does the transportation grid work efficiently, is every building powered and watered, is the water polluted, how good is the police/fire coverage), city ordinaces (is commercial gambling considered legal, is the city considered nuclear-free, does the city provide free clinics by ordinance, etc.) and so on.  I'd love to elaborate more on this here, but I'm just writing a forum thread. 

Not only would we get a glimpse at which political extreme is the best at running things on a small-to-medium scale, we'd also get a glimpse of how the policies of each political extremity affect a community.

It's a really simple idea, but is the basic gist of the idea even worth pursuing?

* SC4 instead of sc3k or sc2k because it's the most involved and complex of the series, and it gives the most comprehensive information about the impact of each decision a player makes within a city.

[BloodEagle]

SimCity (any) isn't a very good simulator, all things considered.  The results you get would be meaningless, esp. from a political standpoint.

Then again, it would be interesting to see how they would react to alien invasions.

[NGTM-1R]

And in all honesty you'd really learn only who's good at managing their inbox, which is not really a great way to run a government. Ask Carter.

[sigtau]

SimCity (any) isn't a very good simulator, all things considered.  The results you get would be meaningless, esp. from a political standpoint.

Then again, it would be interesting to see how they would react to alien invasions.

Not to sound touchy, but have you actually played SC4 and tried to succeed in it?  It's incredibly difficult.

And in all honesty you'd really learn only who's good at managing their inbox, which is not really a great way to run a government. Ask Carter.

I fail to see how managing your inbox correlates with managing a virtual city.

[Klaustrophobia]

nothing personal, but the idea of using a computer game as a political measuring stick is laughable.

[Mongoose]

It'd mean nothing for actual data, but it'd probably be fun nonetheless.

[sigtau]

I like to think of it as a way of pointing and laughing at people who insist that their political beliefs are the only practical way to get things done.

[BloodEagle]

SimCity (any) isn't a very good simulator, all things considered.  The results you get would be meaningless, esp. from a political standpoint.

Then again, it would be interesting to see how they would react to alien invasions.

Not to sound touchy, but have you actually played SC4 and tried to succeed in it?  It's incredibly difficult.

What does difficulty have to do with it?

If doing well at something difficult is your metric, have them play Ninja Gaiden.

[Dragon]

The idea is sound, but a better simulator would be needed. Perhaps something purpose-built, and focused on running the country rather than one city. It'd have to be the mother of all simulators to be suitable for such a thing.
That said, it'd certainly be interesting to see how various well known politicians do in a management sim. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them ended up with their town on fire and people fleeing at the mere sight if it. Also, there's one rather important factor: in most sims, you're a governor for life, and you're not getting real world money for making bad decisions. I imagine that if a politician happens to be a good sim player, they often do things in RL which they'd never consider in game, since the only gain from these things is for them personally. Another thing is that in a simulator, it's comparatively easy to "tighten your belt" in times of crisis and sacrifice some happyness to survive, but people are much less forgiving in the real world.

[MP-Ryan]

I'm bothered by your use of the word "extremity" in describing all of those political affiliations.  While each political strip may have its extremists, not all of those identifying groups should ever be considered extreme viewpoints.

Liberalism - classic liberalism - is pretty much the political center of any democracy (a lot of Republicans are actually classical liberals).  Conservativism gets a bad name because of some conservative politicians, but it is not in and of itself an extreme movement, nor is libertarianism (which is just a branch of classical liberalism that's separated from larger liberalism in several democracies after the liberal parties absorbed a part of socialism that doesn't get along with libertarianism).

So your initial premise is flawed to begin with.

[sigtau]

@MP-Ryan: I don't think a single word ("extremity") ruins the premise of the whole thing; my initial explanation was where the flaw was.  Rephrased to "ideology," in reference to each mutually exclusive political stance (even if they intersect in some ways), the premise still makes sense.

@Dragon: Interesting point!  Although it would indeed have to be the mother of all simulators, I suppose the context of which level of government (local, federal, etc.) is being tested needs to be taken into account.  I suppose using SimCity 4 was a bad example, but the point still stands--perhaps making it more generalized: what if we could test each political ideology and see which is most effective on a categorical basis?

@BloodEagle: I think you missed the entire point of what I was trying to say.  Difficult or no, the point is to see which political ideology has an advantage in which field.  Even if we don't use SimCity to test the theory, an experiment similar to the initial proposal could, in theory, yield some interesting results.

[karajorma]

A while back I suggested something similar to a friend. Only instead of Sim City 4, you'd use a much better, open source simulator. And the user with the highest score would become president.

**** democracy, we give the job to the person who's proved best at it.

[Bobboau]

USA: run by a 13 year old Korean.

[Mongoose]

Hey, so long as he knows how to micro, I'm all for it.

[redsniper]

I don't need the god damned gubmint telling ME we require additional pylons!

[SpardaSon21]

I'm pretty sure there's no way that Korean kid would be able to choose appropriate AI governor settings for stuff that needs delegating.  His Diplomacy modifiers would all be huge negatives, too.

[IronBeer]

A while back I suggested something similar to a friend. Only instead of Sim City 4, you'd use a much better, open source simulator. And the user with the highest score would become president.

**** democracy, we give the job to the person who's proved best at it.

Personally, I'm a fan of the idea of a meritocracy, so your idea tickles my fancy.

[karajorma]

USA: run by a 13 year old Korean.

And he'd still be more qualified than whoever you get in 2016.

[jr2]

I don't need the god damned gubmint telling ME we require additional pylons!

[Dragon]

A while back I suggested something similar to a friend. Only instead of Sim City 4, you'd use a much better, open source simulator. And the user with the highest score would become president.

**** democracy, we give the job to the person who's proved best at it.

Personally, I'm a fan of the idea of a meritocracy, so your idea tickles my fancy.

Yes, that'd be a great idea. Meritocracy is perhaps the most "just" of the imaginable government systems. You're good at governing, you're doing this. The moment you stop being good at it, you're replaced. Unfortunately, nobody in charge would actually agree to change to such a system, since that'd hoist them out of office.

And I'm all for the idea of an open source "Sim America" management sim. You may start by signing the declaration of independence and go from there, or chose any other moment to try to achieve power and run the country. America would be very good for it, because it's political system and currency remained pretty much the same for over 200 years (IIRC, you could go to a store with Civil War era Union dollars and they'd have to accept them because technically, they're still the same currency as today), unlike Europe where things were much more complicated. Not to mention it's rather big and only borders with Canada and Mexico, and it's area stayed more or less constant through it's existence. Also, since you only have two meaningful political parties, the election would be between "You" and "Opponent", which is a great simplification from systems where there's more parties.