A few years ago, I told a friend of mine about our somewhat peculiar WA proclivities. When asked about Committees, I repeated the standard GA dogma: Committees are perfect, since otherwise, they become meaningless. I thought about his response: then why not have the Assembly take direct control of all member nations? If they are perfect, then they will always do better than whatever the imperfect member nations would do.
This is an important point. Member nations are regulated and proposals are repealed due, sometimes, to enforcement issues. At other times, it has to do with some policy not suiting all nations. Implicitly, under a Committee-perfection standard, if all these responsibilities were given to Committees, they would never happen. In fact, a perfectly administering and knowing Committee, would be, by definition, always more responsible, proactive, effective, and accountable than any member nation could be by virtue of their imperfection.
If that is the case, and member nations always perform more poorly, why should we not delegate every single operation of the state to the World Assembly, which would be more efficient and proactive? Why not delegate over the maintenance of jails and criminal justice if the WA cannot make mistakes and will always execute the laws perfectly? Why not delegate over welfare programmes if nobody under WA welfare can cheat and nor can any member nation skim off the money? The consequences of this dogma lead only and inexorably towards a single near-universal unity authority with unlimited jurisdiction.
But let us first examine the emergence of this doctrine. With all committee matters, it emerged shortly before the creation of the post-Enodian ruleset by The Most Glorious Hack and others. At the time, Hack viewed committees as a metagaming violation – that attempting to create a committee in fact did not, to the site, create one, thus falling outside the scope of the then-NS United Nations. This view was reversed amid strong protest from many then-NSUN members, arguing that removing the ability for the GA to use committees would doom every possible proposal into endless minutiae and enforcement provisions.
Part of this was the Moderators at the time wanting to avoid committee staffing being specified in resolutions, as that would enshrine certain nations or regions into resolutions. In these discussions, Hack proposed something of a compromise that ended up taking root: that Committees are staffed by “gnomes” which spring into existence for the purpose of those Committees are have no connection to any specific member nation. From here emerged the view that no committee can be biased towards or against any member nation, and ergo, all committee are perfectly neutral and unbiased.
By the formation of the current forums, the gnomes on the GA committees and the gnomes responsible for the enforcement of WA resolutions had become conflated. The latter gnomes, those responsible for WA enforcement, were ascribed omnipotent and omniscient powers to enforce WA resolutions. It was they who effected the statistical changes associated with a resolution and changed the laws mentioned in every World Assembly telegram. The later development of what is now somewhat derisively called “magical compliance” further extended to the committees staffed by gnomes. For if the gnomes enforcing resolutions are all-powerful, why would the same sort of gnomes sitting on committees not be?
Much more recently, one of my resolutions, Compliance Commission, was a significant part of overturning the view that non-compliance, due to the existence of the gnomes, was impossible. The total exclusion of even the concept of non-compliance from the World Assembly’s roleplay had severe consequences. And by removing it, we have expanded the scope of roleplay generally as well as created space for a detailed and substantial discussion on the enforcement of GA resolution writ large.
That space has been partially occupied by a resolution which Separatist Peoples and I worked on, Administrative Compliance Act. Its explicit recognition of non-compliance and provision of a mechanism to fight it has firmly rooted magical compliance out of the Assembly. There are many more means by which compliance can be ensured or protected, as well as debate about whether the current or possible future means to do so are justifiable. All of those debates would not have happened but for magical compliance’s defeat.
Yet, if gnomes are endowed with their omnipotent powers by magical compliance, such magic’s demise should also yield the fall of their omnipotence. Verily, the intellectual foundation for endowing the gnomes with such god-like abilities has been firmly discarded. The internal contradictions between that magic and any reasonable conception of the world have been resolved by losing magic its wonder.
A theory of perfect gnomes has similar pretensions. It too carries the same contradictions against any reasonable conception of how the world of NationStates ought to work. Their perfection, unto apotheosis, does not accord with any sense. We as players should not simply accept what comes from the past as mos maiorem without independent thought of our own. That this conception of committees was handed down from the past is no reason not to examine it with the same intensity with which we have re-examined magical compliance.
The internal contradictions of the perfect gnome must too be resolved by their perfection’s removal. With the demise of magical compliance, there is no reason to retain the absurdity of perfect gnome-staffed committee and the implications of the utopian unitary state it conjures. Perhaps the radical international federalist (perhaps a contradiction in terms, for at this point, it verges on the abolition of the nation) may protest, but it was always thus, for the public writ large has never ascribed this most peculiar belief of the Assembly.
This is an important point. Member nations are regulated and proposals are repealed due, sometimes, to enforcement issues. At other times, it has to do with some policy not suiting all nations. Implicitly, under a Committee-perfection standard, if all these responsibilities were given to Committees, they would never happen. In fact, a perfectly administering and knowing Committee, would be, by definition, always more responsible, proactive, effective, and accountable than any member nation could be by virtue of their imperfection.
If that is the case, and member nations always perform more poorly, why should we not delegate every single operation of the state to the World Assembly, which would be more efficient and proactive? Why not delegate over the maintenance of jails and criminal justice if the WA cannot make mistakes and will always execute the laws perfectly? Why not delegate over welfare programmes if nobody under WA welfare can cheat and nor can any member nation skim off the money? The consequences of this dogma lead only and inexorably towards a single near-universal unity authority with unlimited jurisdiction.
But let us first examine the emergence of this doctrine. With all committee matters, it emerged shortly before the creation of the post-Enodian ruleset by The Most Glorious Hack and others. At the time, Hack viewed committees as a metagaming violation – that attempting to create a committee in fact did not, to the site, create one, thus falling outside the scope of the then-NS United Nations. This view was reversed amid strong protest from many then-NSUN members, arguing that removing the ability for the GA to use committees would doom every possible proposal into endless minutiae and enforcement provisions.
Part of this was the Moderators at the time wanting to avoid committee staffing being specified in resolutions, as that would enshrine certain nations or regions into resolutions. In these discussions, Hack proposed something of a compromise that ended up taking root: that Committees are staffed by “gnomes” which spring into existence for the purpose of those Committees are have no connection to any specific member nation. From here emerged the view that no committee can be biased towards or against any member nation, and ergo, all committee are perfectly neutral and unbiased.
By the formation of the current forums, the gnomes on the GA committees and the gnomes responsible for the enforcement of WA resolutions had become conflated. The latter gnomes, those responsible for WA enforcement, were ascribed omnipotent and omniscient powers to enforce WA resolutions. It was they who effected the statistical changes associated with a resolution and changed the laws mentioned in every World Assembly telegram. The later development of what is now somewhat derisively called “magical compliance” further extended to the committees staffed by gnomes. For if the gnomes enforcing resolutions are all-powerful, why would the same sort of gnomes sitting on committees not be?
Much more recently, one of my resolutions, Compliance Commission, was a significant part of overturning the view that non-compliance, due to the existence of the gnomes, was impossible. The total exclusion of even the concept of non-compliance from the World Assembly’s roleplay had severe consequences. And by removing it, we have expanded the scope of roleplay generally as well as created space for a detailed and substantial discussion on the enforcement of GA resolution writ large.
That space has been partially occupied by a resolution which Separatist Peoples and I worked on, Administrative Compliance Act. Its explicit recognition of non-compliance and provision of a mechanism to fight it has firmly rooted magical compliance out of the Assembly. There are many more means by which compliance can be ensured or protected, as well as debate about whether the current or possible future means to do so are justifiable. All of those debates would not have happened but for magical compliance’s defeat.
Yet, if gnomes are endowed with their omnipotent powers by magical compliance, such magic’s demise should also yield the fall of their omnipotence. Verily, the intellectual foundation for endowing the gnomes with such god-like abilities has been firmly discarded. The internal contradictions between that magic and any reasonable conception of the world have been resolved by losing magic its wonder.
A theory of perfect gnomes has similar pretensions. It too carries the same contradictions against any reasonable conception of how the world of NationStates ought to work. Their perfection, unto apotheosis, does not accord with any sense. We as players should not simply accept what comes from the past as mos maiorem without independent thought of our own. That this conception of committees was handed down from the past is no reason not to examine it with the same intensity with which we have re-examined magical compliance.
The internal contradictions of the perfect gnome must too be resolved by their perfection’s removal. With the demise of magical compliance, there is no reason to retain the absurdity of perfect gnome-staffed committee and the implications of the utopian unitary state it conjures. Perhaps the radical international federalist (perhaps a contradiction in terms, for at this point, it verges on the abolition of the nation) may protest, but it was always thus, for the public writ large has never ascribed this most peculiar belief of the Assembly.
