An annoying thing that I've found is that the game continues to treat unemployment as an emigration booster even if you have utopian abundance enabled. If POPs have social welfare, shared burdens or utopian abundance, unemployment shouldn't increase emigration IMO. I mean, it doesn't really make sense. If you can either live your life in complete luxury without having to do anything, or move away to some distant planet to get a job and live like a serf, I'm pretty sure the first would be preferable to any sane sapient.
Unemployment and utopian abundance
- Thread starter Hapchazzard
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One might live in a utopia of unlimited consumerism, but the inability to exercise your talents to provide some tangible, meaningful benefit to your society is also surely a push factor for some.
I think living standards should make such things less of an urgent matter.
I think that the living standard settings should impact how much unemployment drives emigration and how long it takes pops to move down the economic stratum.
The worse the living standards are, the more it should impact emigration and the faster downward movement should be.
On high living standards (utopian abundance/social welfare) it should have a low(er) impact on emigration and make downward movement of economic standings slow(er) BUT shouldn't bug you on the planet listings when it's on Utopian because they'll still be producing science/unity/etc.
I think that the living standard settings should impact how much unemployment drives emigration and how long it takes pops to move down the economic stratum.
The worse the living standards are, the more it should impact emigration and the faster downward movement should be.
On high living standards (utopian abundance/social welfare) it should have a low(er) impact on emigration and make downward movement of economic standings slow(er) BUT shouldn't bug you on the planet listings when it's on Utopian because they'll still be producing science/unity/etc.
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I really don't like how utopian abundance still causes all those events claiming that the increased unemployment is causing desperate people to turn to crime. Desperate for... what, exactly? They're getting everything they could ever want for free. What material goods would they gain from a life of crime that they couldn't get for free from their in-house replicator?
Is it action and adventure they want? They could sign up for military service if they want that. Or if they don't want to die, hyper entertainment complexes probably have pretty realistic VR games.
Is it action and adventure they want? They could sign up for military service if they want that. Or if they don't want to die, hyper entertainment complexes probably have pretty realistic VR games.
Crime under Utopian abundance is essentialy your civs equvelent of borde stupid people eating tide pods or jumping naked into cacti.
Utopian abundance causes unemployed pops to produce unity, doesn't it? To me, it sounds like it's letting unemployed pops engage in cultural work that they'd normally not have time or energy to do due to having to work.
Unfortunately, the system of recruiting neither affect pops, nor pop growth. I mean, mechanically, it doesn't use pops as a "stored" resource, so it can't pick adventurers away from boring wealth life.
upd
But it also means that there is the space left to implement all sorts of social deviances and means to utilize them.
Maybe we're missing a living standard option.
Conscript the unemployed. Unemployed pops are automatically added to a new job (conscript) which produces 1/2 or 1/3 of a soldier job, but has happiness implications.
I think it should be not that simple.
By social deviances, I meant 5% minority of people that has "special" temperament.
For example, the opinion exits, what 5% of people has relatively aggressive temperament, and another 5% has calm, while 90% are semi-equal in that. So aggressive five fits all sorts of soldier and enforcer jobs, and calm five fits all sorts of jobs where weighted decisions is necessity, such as administration and science.
This aggressive-calm dichotomy don't cover combinations of deviances, but I believe you see the point.
While implementing this isn't too complex, it will add a ton of weight coefficients to existing tons, driving both technical and game-wise complexity too high, IMO.
I think this could be solved by making some kind of occupation for pops with this situation. Like how all unemployed FE pops are hedonists.
Studies have in fact shown that most humans will seek employment even if supplied with the necessities of life. Having taken more than a year between jobs under favorable financial circumstances, I can attest that not having anything to do with yourself feels bad, in a vague way.
On the other hand, not every activity which feels enough like work to salve that feeling is actually productive work. One can be making art for a tiny, non-paying audience and feel better about that work than one would feel at a menial 9-5.
So I don't agree that living standards which support unemployed pops should eliminate emigration push (by the same argument those living standards would cause pops to become unemployed even if jobs are available on the same planet) I can see the case for reducing how much push unemployment generates.
On the other hand, not every activity which feels enough like work to salve that feeling is actually productive work. One can be making art for a tiny, non-paying audience and feel better about that work than one would feel at a menial 9-5.
So I don't agree that living standards which support unemployed pops should eliminate emigration push (by the same argument those living standards would cause pops to become unemployed even if jobs are available on the same planet) I can see the case for reducing how much push unemployment generates.
A single pop is an abstraction of thousands of individuals, so talking about a small percentage of these being either this or what isn't very useful, I think. If there are so many of these individuals in a pop group that they'd make an impact, it'd be on the level of being a whole species trait.
Absolutely agree that humans hate being idle. I've also experienced being unemployed for a period of time, and the lack of a purpose is what really started digging into me. I feel like the jobs shown in Stellaris are jobs that directly contribute to the empire in direct, measurable ways, and might not include non-profit work and volunteer organizations that do things without making a net, tangible profit. This would however still have an effect on the societies theyr'e in. Unemployed people who still engage in things on a volunteer, hobbyist basis would create a sense of community among those they do these things with, which is what I imagine the unity output is meant to represent.
While unemployed pops will seek things to keep themselves occupied, I don't think most of them would go so far that they'd actually turn to crime, rather than less destructive ways of keeping themselves occupied. I think the number of criminals at least in our society is mainly in it for material gains, either out of necessity or out of greed, rather than simply being bored and wanting to fuck things up for no particular benefit. Aren't amenities meant to represent ways for your population to keep themselves entertained?
If your world has plenty of amenities, and your population is on utopian abundance, I think the amount of crime generated from unemployment should be negligible, but possibly skyrocket if you run out of consumer goods or amenities. However, it could still create a strong emigration push.
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Imagine Stellaris's empire with thousands of pops. Then this small percentage will be semi-equal to subspecies, if somehow refined from the most. But this is not my point.
In terms of aggressive-calm dichotomy, I mean, for example what first 5% of total employment as a soldier/enforcer jobs may be more efficient than all subsequent soldiers/enforcers, and first 5% of pops used as administrators and researchers are more efficient than all subsequent.
While it can be immersive in some way, it will add another layer of calculations, without obvious game-enhancing effect.
I don't think this really makes sense. In post-scarcity societies people would still be able to work. Nobody is stopping you if you want to write a novel or build a superconductor. It's just that you don't have to do it in order to survive.
It's a relatively new development caused by social pressure, not something intrinsic to the human species. Just two centuries ago it was the opposite: landowners and nobles refused to work even if they were forced into poverty by dwindling assets. I've been told the first one to have a job in my family was my grandfather, even if those before weren't especially wealthy, just run-of-the-mill small landowners (they just got a rent from peasants, it's not like they were doing anything with their lands). Goncarov's Oblomov is a quite funny exploration of that habit.
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Most =/= All. The landowning and nobility classes have traditionally (at least afaik) been a minority.
We of the Raknid species do not understand the latter cultural reference. Our exoskeletons provide excellent protection against plant thorns . . .
Only because you're apparently limiting the definition of work the same way that they did. Said landowners were active in other ways - from politics to overseeing their properties and managing the local economy. Collecting rent, banking, practice of law...none of those would necessarily be considered 'work' to noble standards. I believe the distinction may well have been between working for a wage versus work done for your own businesses / in the name of monarch and country.
