Friday, May 13, 2011

Proposal: I can win any time I want, but let’s do it by proposal rather than spamming

Timed out 3-7 with 3 deferentials.—Yoda

Adminned at 15 May 2011 12:58:10 UTC

The Investor known as ais523 has achieved victory.

I can trivially win at this point by paying dividends at Cayman Island Holding Corp., followed by creating another five shell companies that I solely own and becoming chairman of each of their respective boards. It would take another twelve blog posts, though, so I feel it’s fairer and less spammy to just propose a win, rather than have to go the long way about it. (This also makes it easier to fix the damage if people decide that my previous scam didn’t work, although it seems fine; for those who missed it, I changed CIH’s Business Plan via a proposal, which was also a Shareholder Meeting, to get around the restriction that the Market must approve business plans. This particular combination of official posts is not ruled out by any of the core or dynastic rules; the major error in the ruleset is that rule 2.5 says “post” not “story post”, which would have barred the post also being a proposal.)

Comments

Klisz:

13-05-2011 14:57:13 UTC

I unidle. Quorum remains eight.  for

Josh: Observer he/they

13-05-2011 14:57:43 UTC

I’m not active, but isn’t setting up shell companies a weekly action?

ais523:

13-05-2011 15:01:18 UTC

Ah right. The scam still works anyway, though, as I have complete economic dominance over the entire game, and could just shut the game down by buying everything that anyone’s willing to sell. Thus, people would have to deliberately write anti-me proposals, or repeat the same scam themselves, in order to have a chance of winning, even if it would take a couple of weeks.

Josh: Observer he/they

13-05-2011 15:10:51 UTC

It seems less like the scam works, as such, and more that it non-trivially breaks the game.

I’m unidling to vote for  this anyway, admittedly, as what you can do is post a proposal / Shareholder Meeting post that just says “ais523 wins”, then force it through… I’m not convinced by that aspect of the scam either, personally, but it doesn’t seem any shadier than a certain victory scam of my own devising so I suppose I can’t complain.

Quorum rises to 9.

Kevan: he/him

13-05-2011 15:19:48 UTC

Haven’t been playing this one so I don’t quite follow the specifics (I can’t see how you “get around the restriction that the Market must approve business plans”, from a fresh-eyed skim of the ruleset), but I’m sure you’re right.

But a scam that any other player can repeat for the same benefit, and which can be easily fixed by a slow “posts can’t be in two categories, etc; reverse any abuse of this” proposal isn’t much of a lay-down-your-weapons victory scam, is it?

[Josh] I don’t think that works - if a Shareholder Meeting is approved, it’s just “carrying out its effect as specified in the corresponding subrule”, and that specified effect is just “the Business Plan of this Corporation is changed to the specified new Business Plan”.

ais523:

13-05-2011 15:22:45 UTC

@Kevan: anything can be reversed by CFJ, even a victory. So saying that something can be trivially reversed isn’t particularly useful.

Josh: Observer he/they

13-05-2011 15:26:45 UTC

@Kevan - it’s ambiguous, of course, because the rules weren’t meant to work this way. But as there’s no restriction on what a shareholder meeting post can contain, and as a proposal can explicitly add rules to the ruleset, there seems to be no reason why a mutant post can’t do both.

Purplebeard:

13-05-2011 15:40:16 UTC

Josh: but the effects of a proposal are only carried out if it passes. The approval of a shareholder meeting is a seperate process, and has the limitation that it can only carry out the events specified in one of the subrules.

ais: still, the fact that anyone can trivially copy the scam to get ten times the credits you have sort of diminishes your economic dominance.

Josh: Observer he/they

13-05-2011 15:46:27 UTC

@PB - fair point, the shareholder meeting process uses different language for enactment.

Retracting my vote, for now:  imperial

Kevan: he/him

13-05-2011 15:56:05 UTC

[ais523] No, sure, but anyone stepping up and announcing they have a scam that will take “a couple of weeks” to get them to victory probably isn’t going to get there without someone at least proposing a fix to the ruleset.

Bucky:

13-05-2011 16:47:14 UTC

imperial

Crumb:

13-05-2011 16:54:21 UTC

imperial

Yoda:

13-05-2011 17:24:57 UTC

imperial I looked, but I didn’t see anything that says a post cannot be more than 1 type of official post at the same time.  So, I think if this passes, we need to make that part of the Core Ruleset to avoid future scams such as this.

Travis:

13-05-2011 18:26:12 UTC

against  After seeing your first corporation succeed, everyone could copy it but add *1000 to the business plan, putting them way ahead of you. If you tried to pull it off 4 weeks in a row, I just don’t see that leading to victory. Each week someone would just one-up you by a thousand and you’d never be in the lead.

Galtori:

13-05-2011 19:15:57 UTC

against

ais523:

13-05-2011 19:30:18 UTC

Do people want to make me try to spam the blog with attempts to come out first? Because I’ll try, if they do. (It’ll just involve recruiting coconspirators to make shell corporations for me, so it’ll still be pretty spammy.)

Yoda:

13-05-2011 23:47:01 UTC

I’m still not convinced that your scam actually works.  Even though the post was both a proposal and a shareholder meeting, the effect came from the shareholder meeting being resolved while the proposal was vetoed and therefore cannot pass.

spikebrennan:

13-05-2011 23:53:44 UTC

against

Darknight: he/him

14-05-2011 01:40:41 UTC

against

Josh: Observer he/they

14-05-2011 09:32:57 UTC

against

ais523:

14-05-2011 15:22:12 UTC

@Yoda: the proposal was not vetoed at the time. And all that matters was that the post making the change was a proposal, not that it was enacted via the normal proposal enactment rules.

(I don’t think, btw, that any effects in the post other than changing a Business Plan would have worked, precisely because the rule that approved it wouldn’t have allowed any other sorts of changes.)

Yoda:

14-05-2011 16:19:55 UTC

I realize the proposal was not vetoed at the time, but the effect still came from the shareholder meeting part of the post.

Also, about getting a bunch of co-conspirators: if you could get enough co-conspirators, you could pass a proposal that just states that you achieve victory.  Saying that it will just “involve recruiting coconspirators” is not very useful.

Roujo: he/him

14-05-2011 17:48:09 UTC

against

ais523:

14-05-2011 17:50:37 UTC

@Yoda: You need something like 9 coconspirators to pass a proposal. (Not that that’s completely out of reach, especially if people are bored of the dynasty, which looked like it was happening before the scams livened things up.) I only need 2 coconspirators to win next Monday, and I have one already. It’s a difference of quantity.

ais523:

14-05-2011 19:30:41 UTC

I’m pretty sure now that I’ll beat Yoda, or anyone else who tries to copy the scam. I have too much of a head start, and should win on Monday when the weekly action counter resets.

Oze:

14-05-2011 19:57:00 UTC

for

redtara: they/them

14-05-2011 20:37:04 UTC

imperial

Galtori:

15-05-2011 14:41:02 UTC

against

Yoda:

15-05-2011 19:54:53 UTC

against COV