God's Imitator
Chapter 31: Basic Living Allowance
Fu Chen took out pen and paper, "Alright, then let's simply draft two different proposals.
"The first one, following what Cai Zhiyuan suggested, we'll propose a relatively idealistic plan. Although it probably won't pass, it will help us further confirm the community's rules.
"And if it does happen to pass, then we'll hit the jackpot.
"This proposal would be... the community distributes ten thousand minutes, no, one thousand minutes of visa time to each community player daily.
"Ten thousand minutes is too much, higher than the necessary 1440 minutes per day, making the failure probability even greater.
"Comparatively, one thousand minutes would have a slightly higher success rate. If the one thousand minute proposal passes, we can continue proposing higher amounts next time.
"If even the one thousand minute proposal can't pass, then obviously this approach is completely unworkable."
He looked up, and seeing no objections from the others, continued writing.
"The second proposal: we deduct 3000 minutes of visa time daily from the three community players with the most remaining visa time, and transfer it to the three players with the least remaining visa time."
Li Renshu quickly shook her head, "No no no, that won't work.
"This is somewhat like 'robbing the rich to help the poor,' and probably won't get more than half the votes. At least Wang Yongxin absolutely won't agree."
Cai Zhiyuan didn't care, "So what if Wang Yongxin disagrees? We only need 7 votes.
"As long as the five of us can reach unanimous agreement, then just get two more votes from Uncle Ding, Aunt Su, or anyone else outside, this plan can be implemented without needing Wang Yongxin's consent."
After speaking, he looked at Fu Chen.
However, Fu Chen remained silent for a moment, then crossed out his previous plan.
"It's still better to get everyone's agreement if possible, otherwise we might create some unnecessary rifts."
He looked at Lin Sizhi again, "Lawyer Lin, what do you think?"
Everyone knew that in the previous game, Lin Sizhi and Wang Yongxin had profited the most, so if this plan were actually implemented, the result would be taking visa time from them.
Getting Lin Sizhi's agreement was crucial.
Lin Sizhi pondered for a moment, "I also think this plan isn't quite appropriate.
"It's not because I'm reluctant to part with 3000 minutes of visa time daily, that's not a very large amount. The main issue is that I think this plan isn't conducive to unity within the community.
"Simply put, this method of welfare protection is somewhat too crude."
Fu Chen lowered his head and thought, "Hmm... perhaps you're right. I really don't have much good experience in this area.
"So... is there a better plan?"
Li Renshu picked up the conversation, "What we need to do now is actually redistribute everyone's visa time, in other words, 'taxation.'
"To provide welfare protection for the entire community, we first need to collect this portion of visa time before we can talk about redistribution.
"The principle of taxation is to pluck the most goose feathers while hearing the fewest goose cries.
"In other words, we should collect universally rather than only targeting the top three.
"Moreover, the visa time we collect should all be used to exchange for food and supplies for redistribution, rather than directly transferring this visa time to specific individuals.
"We're providing basic welfare protection, but we can't create a tendency to 'support laziness.'"
Fu Chen thought for a moment, then made several more marks crossing out his original plan on the paper, "Yes, exactly right."
What Li Renshu said wasn't difficult to understand. Everyone present was intelligent and quickly grasped her meaning.
Taking visa time from the top three and directly transferring it to the bottom three was indeed a form of redistribution, but it was too crude and likely to cause dissatisfaction among many people.
The top three would definitely be dissatisfied because this targeting was too strong.
Those ranking slightly higher might also be dissatisfied because they could potentially become top three in the future, which would make them restrain themselves in subsequent games or even deliberately control their visa time balance.
Even those ranking slightly lower but not in the bottom three would be dissatisfied.
Because despite having little visa time themselves, they couldn't benefit from this rule.
The bottom three would essentially be getting something for nothing, which already exceeded the scope of "minimum protection."
Everyone's visa time was earned through their own hard work, and earning visa time in the future might even involve risking their lives.
Therefore, overly direct and crude distribution methods could very likely provoke group opposition.
Li Renshu said, "I think we might do it this way.
"Let's calculate roughly how much visa time is needed to exchange for everyone's daily essential living supplies.
"For just eating, 80 minutes of visa time is sufficient.
"For 12 people, that's 960 minutes of visa time.
"The total visa time we earned from 'Blood Poker' seems to be... 1,055,500.
"0.1%.
"We only need to deduct 0.1% from the total visa time daily to cover everyone's essential living supplies.
"Of course, considering that visa time naturally depletes over time and error tolerance issues, this number has significant room for upward adjustment."
Li Renshu's calculation was actually rather rough, but generally correct.
Previously on the big screen, it had displayed each person's visa time gained from 'Blood Poker,' and Li Renshu had already made corresponding records at that time.
Fu Chen suddenly realized something, "Wait, the big screen said earlier that these chips would only convert to everyone's visa time after 24 hours.
"Isn't this also hinting that we can actually change the distribution method within 24 hours?
"How much time is left until the 24 hours?"
Cai Zhiyuan looked at the wall clock in the room, "About an hour left."
Fu Chen nodded, "Then we need to hurry."
Li Renshu continued, "We can consider two methods:
"First, deduct based on each person's total visa time, 0.1% daily or 3% monthly.
"Second, deduct based on visa time earned in each game. Assuming each person participates in at least one game monthly, according to current profit rates, just deducting a fixed 3% or 5% from game earnings would be completely sufficient."
After considering for a moment, the others said, "Then the latter option is better."
Although the first plan seemed good too, it could easily affect everyone's original spending plans.
If deducting 0.2% daily or 6% monthly, then for individual players, the more they spent before the deduction, the more advantageous it would be.
With the same 0.1% daily deduction, if a player originally had a balance of 100,000, then 100 would be deducted; if they spent money in a rush the day before, reducing their balance to 80,000, then only 80 would be deducted.
This difference seemed insignificant, but among the 12 players, quite a few were meticulous calculators.
If future players accumulated large amounts of visa time, far exceeding what's needed for daily life, they would inevitably use rush spending to minimize their taxes.
Therefore, this method had certain flaws.
Though it might not be obvious initially, it could potentially trigger a series of problems later.
Comparatively, deducting 3% from game earnings uniformly after each game would more easily gain most people's support.
After thinking for a moment, Cai Zhiyuan raised a new question, "But the calculation method of deducting a fixed 3% from game earnings to maintain basic living needs is based on a premise: that each person participates in at least one game monthly and maintains current profit rates.
"Should we specify this clearly in the rules?
"If some people, not due to force majeure but out of personal choice, become lazy and deliberately don't participate in games within a month, should we establish corresponding punishment measures?"
Li Renshu shook her head, "Better not.
"Once we establish such rules, it means someone would have to specifically judge violators' subjective intentions, which could easily be used as a pretext to stir up conflicts.
"Moreover, the welfare policy we're currently establishing only solves the eating problem and doesn't cover daily natural visa time consumption.
"In other words, relying solely on welfare policy won't enable survival.
"When visa time is nearly depleted, everyone will still participate in games and try to earn as much visa time as possible. So the situation you're worried about shouldn't occur.
"Of course, if we're concerned that future games can't maintain this profit level and need to increase error tolerance, we can raise this number to 5% or even higher."
After another round of brief discussion, Fu Chen finally settled on these two plans.