acka-research Digest Sunday, March 07 1999 Volume: 04 Issue: 051 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Acka: P4105: a detailed look From: Joseph DeVincentis Date: Sun, 07 Mar 1999 21:19:20 -0500 (EST) > Any player who is not a pseudo-Founder may publicly announce their > intent to form an Institution. By so doing they become a pseudo-Founder. > If during the following seven day period at least two other players > publicly announce that they wish to join the Institution the > pseudo-Founder intends to form, then the pseudo-Founder may form the > Institution by: > i) announcing its name, > ii) the names of its initial members (who must be the pseudo-Founder and > at least two of the players who have publicly announced their desire to > join) , > iii) any Institutional Powers it will initially own, and any ancillary > information required to create those Powers. > iv) paying the standard harfer fee and any fees associated with the > creation of its initial Institutional Powers. > > Upon doing so they cease to be a pseudo-Founder and the Institution is > created along with its initial Powers, if any. If a player has been a > pseudo-Founder for a contiguous seven day period then they cease to be > one. The former one-org-creation-per-player-per-seven-days limit is now just one-at-a-time, with seven days to complete the creation as always. > An Institution is only permitted to perform those actions, or have those > behaviours or properties, which are permitted for all Institutions, or > which are accorded to it by the Institutional Powers it owns. Interesting. So if we want to make any special Institutions with special abilities we have to make those abilities into Institutional Powers those institutions own. > Institutional powers are tradeable entities that may only be owned by > Institutions; this takes precedence over all rules regarding entity > ownership. Unowned Institutional Powers are automatically destroyed. I hope tradeable inst. powers don't cause any problems. > A Procedural Document is an Institutional Power which effects which > members are permitted to make a Suggestion to an Institution. [...] > The following applies to all Institutions: > a) If it is ever the case that no member of an Institution is able to > make a Suggestion, then all active players are permitted to make > Suggestions. It appears this allows non-members to make suggestions when this applies. This is also possibly paradoxical, as it seems to negate its own premise whenever it applies its effect, unless there are no active player members or all members are prevented from making suggestions by rules of higher precedence. > b) If, after the application of a), there are still no members who may > make Suggestions, any member may make a Suggestion. See above. > Were the rules require Group Approval for an Institutional Action by a > Corporation, it shall be determined in the following way: > > One week after a Suggestion is made, or when sufficient votes have been > made such that no additional votes would change the outcome, whichever > is sooner, the action is attempted if the majority of the votes cast on > it were FOR the Suggestion. The "sufficient votes" clause is either problematic with respect to the ability to change stock votes, or impossible to achieve due to the ability to change stock votes, depending on whether re-operating your stock is considered an "additional vote". > Stock is an ownable, operable entity capable of casting one vote on any > Suggestion legally put to the Corporation which issued it. When it casts > its vote any prior votes made by it on that Suggestion are destroyed. > Whenever Stock is issued, it is created in the recipient's possession. > All types of Institution are permitted to own Stock. Reference for above. > A Corporation shall always accept any one sided trade made to it which > only involves Stock issued by it. A Corporation may not Operate any > Stock which was issued by it. Hmm, suicidal corps. Here, corp A, I give you all of your stock. Poof! :-) > b) If there exists a group of Institutions such that no entity other > than those Institutions owns any shares issued by any of any of the > Corporations in that group, then all of the Corporate Structures owned > by those Institutions are destroyed. This seems to disallow corps from being wholly-owned subsidiaries of non-corporate institutions, for better or worse. > An Institution which owns a Funding Charter is a Trust Fund. A Trust > Fund is not permitted to undertake Trades except as specified by its > Funding Charter. A Trust Fund may exist without members. > > The Funding Charter's text must be specified at the time of creation, > after which it may not be altered. Any player may object to the text of > a Funding Charter. If to players do so, the Funding Charter is > destroyed. A Trust Fund may exist without members, but if any two players object to the text of its Funding Charter, the Charter is destroyed, and then the institution is no longer a trust fund and may not exist without members, so goes belly-up. > If ever it is impossible to determine what action (if any) a Funding > Charter takes or whether it takes an action at all, then the Funding > Charter is destroyed. Heh. > If a Trust Fund does not own any tradeable entities for which its > Funding Charter is capable of initiating a trade, then its Funding > Charter is destroyed. That's nice. If a memberless Trust Fund gives away the last of its stuff, it ceases to exist. Nice. Of course, if you wanted to reuse a Trust, just leave it owning a single A$ and put this text in its charter: "This Trust Fund shall give its last A$ to Xxxxx upon his public request, and shall not initiate any other trades which would give away its last A$." > An Institution which owns a Political Doctrine may be refereed to as a > Political Party. I wonder what this leaves Vulcan's status as... BTW, I hereby referee to Vulcan as a Political Party. :-) > A Political Party is capable of casting a positive vote with a value > equal to or less than one hundred times the smallest Voting > Characteristic possessed by its members. > > At the end of a proposal's voting period, but before votes on that > proposal are counted, if: > i) every voting player who is a member of a given Political Party voted > to accept that proposal, and > ii) no voting player who is a member of the Party is also a member of > some other Party, and > iii) the party has at least three voting players as members, then the > Political Party itself shall cast a vote equal to the lesser of: > a) the percentage that the total vote of its members represented of the > maximum total vote its members were capable of casting on that proposal, > multiplied by the number of voting players in the party > b) the maximum vote it is capable of casting. Ugh, well, if anybody really wants to make a political party I guess I'll revive/update the bot unity vote code. > When a Religious Dogma is created, its text may be specified. Religious > Dogma may be modified as described by itself, or as an Institutional > Action. If ever it is impossible to determine the exact wording of a > Religious Dogma, then the Religious Dogma is amended to have no text at > all. Does this mean it can't be secret any more? > It is impermissible for an Intelligent Entity to take a game > action which constitutes Iconoclasm if it has any legal alternative > which would not constitute Iconoclasm. [That is, Iconoclasm normally > doesn't happen unless there is no alternative. It is possible for a > player to commit Iconoclasm by inaction, though.] Can we please get rid of this? I still think this was always one of the most abusive bits of all the org rules, because it can be abused in nasty, insidious ways. (Admittedly, the "game action" wording makes it less problematic than it once was, but you can still cause a lot of confusion. "I trade you my Babel Fish for A$100." 13 days later: "Oops, I didn't actually trade you the Babel Fish because the Religious Dogma of the Church of Douglas Adams prohibits me from trading it to anybody who is not a member of the church", after any number of other crazy events have happened (or not).) > {{A Church is an Institution. Each Church receives a Church Dogma and a > Group Leader Procedural Document. Rule 15-2 (Church) is repealed.}} Too bad they didn't each get a Religious Dogma. /dev/joe ------------------------------ End of acka-research Digest V4 #51 **********************************