Cortath

Neither. I was planning candied pear, potato, goat cheese, with arugula on top. Debating what kind of dressing. Possibly something simple, like lemon juice and olive oil, but perhaps more substantial, due to the potential dryness of the final creation.

I'm taking the time to crunch your numbers, while also making dough for a pizza. Guess which one is tastier?

*chuckles* *sighs* Alrighty. Evidently I need to explain something. I ignored a post. It was brought up that I had ignored it. I responded to the content of the post I had originally ignored. Then, I responded explaining why I had originally ignored it. Now, let's get back on track.

Your semantic argument is cute.

This is an automated response from Cortath, an Imperial Officer of the New Pacific Order. You have generated this response for the following reasons: [bad economics], [MK!=NPO]. Please read this post regarding the ability to pay off reparations. and this post about how your alliance is different than mine.

*chuckles heartily* Anyone who knows me knows that I do not whine, I chuckle. And yes, you are precisely correct, which is why I ignored the post. Suggestions for mechanisms to remove or alter this clause will fall on the deaf ears of Karma, hence, I do not care to waste my breath discussing them.

There's no ignoring. There's simply the fact that Karma has made it clear that they will no accept no altering of that term. If they will, contrary to their express statements, they need to come and approach us with the new, altered term.

I am a simple man, TypoNinja. I am not a Diplomat; I am not a Statesman. I am not even a soldier. At best, I am an economist, a scribe, and but a man. When Karma tells us, "The group is not willing to alter the terms as they stand. Particularly not to the current counteroffer and in general not at all," I believe them. The NPO wants Karma to give something up. We're willing to give something up in exchange for that. We made an offer, it was refused. But it's not as simple as that. Karma said that the very thing wanted to be given, could, under no circumstances, be given up. And for Karma, unlike for us, it's a matter of "want" not "can." Karma "wants" to keep that term in place. We "cannot" meet the rest of the terms, if those terms are in place. Karma has the ability to alter those terms, so that the NPO "can" accept them, using any number of mechanisms, other terms, taking other things that they might want, but they did not "want" to alter those terms.

No, I didn't mean that. I meant the difference between his time estimates of 2-3 months and 5-6 months, in response to Archon's post.

See. This is what I like. Honesty. I don't believe that these reparation amounts were in any way based off of calculations on how much we could pay. I think Karma came up with a number that sounded good to them, and gave it to us. When we responded that we felt it was not payable and provided a lot of economic analysis to back it up, they were forced to try to come with unrealistic economic models to prove that we can. But when it comes down to it, steodonn, I think your opinion reflects that of Karma best than many other posts I've seen in the past few days. These terms weren't made to be payable. Many alliances in Karma, against us, wants eternal war with us. They know that PR-wise, that's going to be hard to get. So they sit around and think, "What terms would be impossible to pay, just like eternal war, which is what we want? That way, we get the benefits of eternal war, without the negative PR" This is the result. I think that Karma's attempts are pretty transparent, made more so by the rejection of the counter-offer and their stated unwillingness to drop the peace mode clause, and tech coming from 1K+ nation clauses, no matter what was given by NPO in exchange.

So you're stating that you believe these 18 alliances would have accepted a higher counter-offer? Funny. No one mentioned that during negotiations when we made the counter-offer.

This is an automated response from Cortath, an Imperial Officer of the New Pacific Order. You have generated this response for the following reasons: [bad economics], [efficiency calculations]. Please read this post.

The point I'm making is simple: You stated we did not contact members of the governments of the 18 alliances we are fighting against. I'm stating that in fact we did. Simple as that.

I personally spoke with FOK Government, specifically, MrCyber, your Minister of Economic Affairs on June 4, 2009. That your government (the one you lead, I believe?) does not inform you of these things is none of my business.

The same one I took the time and courtesy to quote in the post right above yours.

What is interesting, Stonewall Jaxon, and I'm sure a nation in an alliance such as yours can appreciate this, is that I presume they rejected our counter-offer, because they were scared of us. They fear that if we have anything that would allow us to rebuild in under one year, we'll go after them and kill them all. Strategies of long-term war or reparations that are based off of our enemies coming back with a chip on their shoulder and hatred in their hearts are mistaken, as we have learned from our conflict with FAN, and I wish that we had learned it sooner.

Of course. That's what we do. The issue is that we have this subset of nations, and they're about to get pounded into oblivion. While many have disputed our military estimates, I believe that they are sound, and in fact, conservative. And the issue of course, is that these reparations cannot be paid with "just" Banks. Banks will have to fund hundreds of nations as tech farms in order to push out the tech from both the 1K+ tech nations and for the other portion of the reps. That's where you lose a lot of efficiency. What people again, do not understand when they make their estimates, is that the NPO is now an extremely low-level NS/infra heavy alliance, and that in order for those nations to push out tech (since they obviously can't push out money), they're going to need to be funded, and that's where you're going to lose the efficiency. Moreover, those nations aren't 6 slot nations, but 4-5 slot nations, and with at least one slot used for money coming in to fund tech, a 5 slot nation's at best output would be 4 slots, and not at 100% slot utilization/efficiency. Let me end by saying that I appreciate the civility with which you have responded to my post.

I see you've been able to respond to other posts in this thread; however, not the one that I made calling you out. I don't expect you to answer, but I'd like those reading this thread to note that.

What many economists fail to understand about the NPO is that its size makes it very different. I got into an (surprisingly, given it was on these forums) intelligent discussion with some some Grämlins people a while back where we were both refuting certain people who were saying that Grämlins was much better at tech than we were. What we (me and the Grämlins guy) were trying to explain to this guy was that our alliances are entirely different. The NPO is a mass-member alliance. Grämlins, and many other alliances are/were invite-only, or require certain strength requirements before letting them in. The NPO is a mass-member alliance, and an alliance that has been #1 for a very long time, on most ways one might measure "#1." As a result, a lot of people want to join us, simply because we're the best. That's the nature of human psychology, I suppose. This yields a caliber of applicant that is probably one of the lowest in the game. To combat that, early on in our existence, we constructed, and maintain, an Academy that is extremely difficult to get through (on the spectrum of academies that various alliances have that I have observed), in an attempt to weed out these people. But they still get through. And in a very large alliance, these people can still meet various mechanical activity checks our alliance can construct, but still fall through the cracks in that they don't actively contribute or participate in various jobs of our department, or fight as many wars they should. As a mass-member alliance, we deal in vary large numbers of people when it comes to economic programs. Small alliances (let's say under 150) and medium alliances (let's say 150-400), tend to be able to focus more on mircoeconomics (nation level economics) when it comes to development programs whereas large alliances (400+) need to focus more on macroeconomics (alliance level economics). That is, a small alliance, when it creates an economic program, can reach a higher slot efficiency than a large alliance, because a small alliance generally has more active members, and fewer people in each program. Smaller alliances, and newer alliances, have more active members, because you have to actively join a new alliance. That takes considerably more effort than sitting in an alliance you've been in for years. Thus, smaller alliances have much more efficient economics at the microeconomics, whereas larger alliances have to focus on macroeconomic efficiency, that is, constructing programs that are effective in creating efficiency at masses of low-activity nations. I think this is how you get a lot of differences in economic analyses that Karma and NPO have had. I look at say, MK, or VE, with about 150 and 300 nations respectively, and you can see that their understanding of economics is generally based on higher slot/participation/activity estimates than ours are. Similarly, alliances like Grämlins, which are "elite" rather than "mass-member" have similarly different understandings of economics. That's fine and good. Everyone has different understandings of economics because their economics is grounded in the material realities of their alliances, as it should be. When it becomes problematic is when people apply their understandings of economics that are particular their alliance's reality to another alliance that has a fundamentally different reality.

Additionally, let me add that none of my math assumes that you can be nuked three times a day. In no post I've made on this forum have I said that. My math assumes that in 14 days of war, you get 13 nukes.

I give Karma the credit that what they say is true: that they have been monitoring our banks and such. Given that they will have and have had ample time, I also presume that were these terms accepted, they would be prepared to attack. Given that there are 18 alliances against us, I don't think it's a stretch to say that they're going to be able to attack our nations 3v1. The tech factor isn't "6K" but "WRC and 3K," which is something entirely different, and not at all unrealistic. Additionally, my numbers are very conservative. They only assume 14 days of war, which isn't what's going to happen. Our nations who respond to our orders most quickly will go into war mode, and then get hit, waiting for several days until we hit the 90% number. It's not unreasonable to think that it could take a week, which means 21 days of war for the people who respond to the orders most quickly. And who are those people? But the very people who are most active, most responsible, and who will be most instrumental in paying off reparations. It's their nations who will get hit the most. *shrugs* You called me out on my math. I replied. That you don't wish to debate the matter means these things to me: You have no math Your math is wrong You didn't read my original math You didn't read my post All of the above If you don't want to talk math, don't start threads pretending to talk math. The 5-6 month mark is unrealistic for the same reasons. The math is amateurish at best. All he did was multiply his answer by two-ish. If his estimates were based on a single independent variable, it would work, but this is a multi-variable equation. All he did was take these assumptions: 100% slot efficiency, 100% activity, 100% of 181 nations participating, and 100% of them able to pay, and divide one of those variables by half. But in the "real world," which evidently isn't where his economics live, which, I might add, is surprising, because I've usually found Grämlins economics people to pretty knowledgeable and forthright, all of these variables are going to be significantly less than 100%. Making one of them 50% does not a "realistic scenario" make. And the whole thing that he isn't considering as part of this problem, is that we're only talking about part 1 of 2 of the reps. The reps include the 300K tech from 1K+ tech nations, AND the 7/8B or 233.3/266.6K tech, which as per the terms, must be paid simultaneously. That means these same nations that are also sending out tech in his equations also have to be helping to send out tech/money for part 2. Again, I've yet to see a systematic and comprehensive analysis by anyone in Karma about how these reparations are going to be paid, after the damage that will be dealt in the 14+ days of war.

Present your math, and we can talk. But you won't present your math, because I know exactly how your 2-3 months estimates come about. It assumes these things: 100% activity 100% slot efficiency at 6 slots 100% participation by 100% of the nations who have more than 1K+ tech And that all these nations will be able to pay out every single time after being destroyed in war As I stated in my post, these assumptions are unrealistic.

That's a bold-faced lie. The New Pacific Order contacted leadership from every single alliance in Karma multiple times for weeks before Karma finally got its act together to have Londo be their messenger and present us with terms. In fact, I spoke with you in that very capacity. The answer was always the same: "We negotiate as a bloc. We will not discuss terms individually. Wait for us to come to you."

This is an automated response from Cortath, an Imperial Officer of the New Pacific Order. You have generated this response for the following reasons: [poor mathematics, efficiency estimates]. Please read this post. Thank you for your time.

This is an automated response from Cortath, an Imperial Officer of the New Pacific Order. You have generated this response for the following reasons: [bad economics]. Please read this post. Thank you for your time.