More living standards that allow a happy "unemployment"

[DeanTheDull]

Who says they’re unemployed?

it pushes upwards. Meaning a new pop occupies the lowest jobs, and pushes the entire chain upwards, and a ruler becomes the master… i.e. they have transcended any need to perform a social function, there is only the pursuit of luxury. True meaning of decadence

I don't find that very compelling, but it would be a very interesting nerf to the living standard if any time a pop was unemployed- say due to orbital bombardment- it would take the normal decade to de-transition from an unemployed ruler pop to a productive job again.

 

[Mcgan]

That reminds me of Hedonists in FEs

Jobs - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

 

[TrotBot]

If there was some more xeno rules available under species rights, i could see a xenophobic decadent society pushing its own species higher in stratum when they have no job. But that's really the only context I see where an authoritarian would "rescue" the unemployed and have them be that upwardly mobile.

 

[BrokenSky]

I can't say that more living standard options should exist. Technically I think fewer should exist. But that is a different topic.

However I do think that living standard should be broken into more pieces.

For example (and this could be per species):

• Education (trades growth rate for productivity)
  • Private only, no subsidy
  • Mixed
  • Public only
• Healthcare (trades consumer goods for happiness and growth)
  • Private only, no subsidy
  • Mixed
  • Public only
• Taxes (trades happiness for trade value)
  • Regressive taxes
  • Progressive taxes
  • Flat taxes
• Consumer goods (unity vs ethos)
  • Government issued
  • Mixed
  • Free market
• Welfare (will replace living standards)
  • No welfare
  • Existence minimum welfare
  • Thriving welfare
• Family aid (parental leave, benefits, etc) (trades consumer goods and productivity for growth)
  • No family aid
  • Limited family aid
  • Family values first
• Universal income (gives flat amount of consumer goods to pops)
  • None
  • +0.1
  • +0.25
  • +0.5
  • +1

Ethics and civics could add or remove options, while these are "just" bonuses/penalties they do flesh out the RP aspect a lot more than "social welfare".

Add to this, I feel like education should impact political power (and they should fix it so that pops' political power affects their contribution to faction weight)

 

[BrokenSky]

If there was some more xeno rules available under species rights, i could see a xenophobic decadent society pushing its own species higher in stratum when they have no job. But that's really the only context I see where an authoritarian would "rescue" the unemployed and have them be that upwardly mobile.

I think the idea is more like the people at the top promote themselves to "we don't need to work at all" jobs (since there are more people than are needed to have jobs) - a job which consumes a lot of CGs and produces nothing except making the pop working it very happy and having increase political power, and then pops promote to fill the now empty ruler job, and then workers promote for the specialist job and then unemployed take up the worker jobs.

(In terms of the job 'producing nothing, btw, really you're trading CGs for increasing planet happiness and potentially if they fix political power for factions for boosting supported factions - potentially the pops could also have very high gov ethic attraction, since they're heavily invested in the status quo).

 

[Bezborg]

That reminds me of Hedonists in FEs

Jobs - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

Yeah, true. That’s precisely it… the end-goal of a pleasure seeker, in a post-scarcity context.
Lots of people here are are talking about how an authoritarian would never “save the unemployed” bla bla… but they’re missing the point.

my suggestion is not about ths bottom of their society, but the very top.

 

[HFY]

I wish Pleasure Seekers did that, yeah.

Just have a job at the Specialist tier which captures all unemployed Decadent pops, like the Servant job does for unemployed Domestic slaves.

 

[TrotBot]

ok but you have a clear difference between an unemployed ruler, specialist, or worker. that's the entire point is that it is not utopian abundance, which is absolutely equal at 1:1:1. so i would be fine with this if it captured unemployed rulers i guess, but not workers. it isn't really "post-scarcity", it is artificially imposed scarcity for the 2/3 of your classes (with some scraps) so that the ruling class get 1.1 consumer goods and live it up. the economy is post-scarcity, the politics of that economy, not so much

 

[Bezborg]

ok but you have a clear difference between an unemployed ruler, specialist, or worker. that's the entire point is that it is not utopian abundance, which is absolutely equal at 1:1:1. so i would be fine with this if it captured unemployed rulers i guess, but not workers. it isn't really "post-scarcity", it is artificially imposed scarcity for the 2/3 of your classes (with some scraps) so that the ruling class get 1.1 consumer goods and live it up. the economy is post-scarcity, the politics of that economy, not so much

But you see, again you're seeing it as uneployment, and then you have conceptual issues with it.

In my suggestion, there is no "unemployed workers", don't you see? The decadent society would keep lower strata employed so that the upper strata can abandon work altogehter and achieve the goal of their entire social philosophy. So it is post-scarcity: for the elites.

Do you get it? There is not a single moment where a worker is unemployed in my suggestion, rather the rulers get bumped into a dynamic "work slot", which is reminiscent of the dynamic servant slot in terms of mechanics.

 

[TrotBot]

But you see, again you're seeing it as uneployment, and then you have conceptual issues with it.

In my suggestion, there is no "unemployed workers", don't you see? The decadent society would keep lower strata employed so that the upper strata can abandon work altogehter and achieve the goal of their entire social philosophy. So it is post-scarcity: for the elites.

Do you get it? There is not a single moment where a worker is unemployed in my suggestion, rather the rulers get bumped into a dynamic "work slot", which is reminiscent of the dynamic servant slot in terms of mechanics.

sure, so long as this does not lead to equal benefits and unhappiness as under utopian abundance, the distinction between the two societies is already too muddled and this game needs more galactic cold war breaking out into galactic liberation wars, not less

 

[Bezborg]

sure, so long as this does not lead to equal benefits and unhappiness as under utopian abundance, the distinction between the two societies is already too muddled and this game needs more galactic cold war breaking out into galactic liberation wars, not less

I can agree with you, but the mechanics of living standards have zero bearing on the animosity between opposing ethics.

And this is fine. Because why wouldn't two highly advanced societies have post-scarcity, which they distribute according to their ethics, and have an ethics-based grudge on each other, thinking of each other as perverse or naive, but in fact living in a similar way, albeit with a different ideological infrastructure?

There's no issues with that, even in our own history.

A capitalist fat cat and a totalitarian communist high official may live in literally the same mansion, sharing the same lavish lifestyle while others do the work, and hate each other's guts, on an ideological basis.

 

[HFY]

sure, so long as this does not lead to equal benefits and unhappiness as under utopian abundance, the distinction between the two societies is already too muddled and this game needs more galactic cold war breaking out into galactic liberation wars, not less

The distinction should be quite clear.

Utopian Abundance makes everyone happy, even people not formally employed.

Decadent makes SOME people happy, but those people never take Worker jobs and instead thrive on the backs of the enslaved underclass, which is abused and ripe for revolution (espionage target).

Heh, maybe call it Dystopian Abundance.

 

[Bezborg]

The distinction should be quite clear.

Utopian Abundance makes everyone happy, even people not formally employed.

Decadent makes SOME people happy, but those people never take Worker jobs and instead thrive on the backs of the enslaved underclass, which is abused and ripe for revolution (espionage target).

Heh, maybe call it Dystopian Abundance.

This guy gets it

 

[WarriorofMODS]

The distinction should be quite clear.

Utopian Abundance makes everyone happy, even people not formally employed.

Decadent makes SOME people happy, but those people never take Worker jobs and instead thrive on the backs of the enslaved underclass, which is abused and ripe for revolution (espionage target).

Heh, maybe call it Dystopian Abundance.

I like this idea. A lot of mods have explored this, including the one I just mentioned, and it's pretty darn cool to play around with. It also adds a lot to the role play aspect of this game.

Furthermore, if were talking about improving upon living standards, why not expand upon the collectivist civic and turn it into an ethic? This has also been explored in several mods, and it just makes so much more sense that consumerism and collectivism should be ethics instead of just empty gimmicks.

For a lot of these ideas, the proof of concept is there: many of the ideas presented in this thread have already been implemented and tweaked to perfection in countless mods, so there's no real excuse. And the number of downloads on these show that there's some very real demand for these changes.