Subject: Public Opinion

From: Henry Towsner <htowsner@s...>
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 18:05:47 -0700

Discussion seems to have spontaneously died for some reason, 
so I'd like to bring us back to implementing public opinion. Here's 
a sketch for a method I rather like:

There are a number of Issues, say 5 to 10. Some could be 
actual issues (Health Care or Royal Power) while others could be a 
little goofy (Broccoli).
There is also a public stance on each issue, a value from +10 
to -10. This would initially be set at random and could be 
manipulated via political capital. Some could later be tied to 
performance of different areas (things that make Parliament look weak 
might result in increased Royal Power ratings while excessive action 
by the king might make it less popular).
Each bill would initially have a 0 rating for each issue. 
Political Capital could be spent to associate a bill with an issue 
(i.e. "The people can see that although this bill appears to just 
change the word 'teh' to 'the', it is really an attempt to undermine 
the royal authority which has been the root of our nation's 
greatness"). The association of a bill with an issue would range 
from -5 to +5. We could also eventually add a way to tie bills to 
ideas based on actual content.
Of course, the final public opinion for a bill would be the 
sum of the public stance times the association of a bill with each 
issue. So if the public is +5 on royal power and a bill is 
considered -2 on royal power, the public opinion would be -10. If 
the bill also happened to be -1 on Broccoli while the public was -2, 
the final public opinion would be -8.

Comments?
-- 
Henry Towsner <htowsner@s...>

Majority, n.: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law