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Delta bylaws
This page documents the policies, bylaws, etc of Delta.
The town is currently a directorate of its two founders, who reign as dictators-for-life, and who are colloquially titled "co-consuls". There is no system of succession currently established. MilesBHuff, as the town's "Mayor", serves as the First Among Equals, and is responsible for most of the town's commandline duties.
Each co-consul may do as he likes in the town, except for that which reason disallows and that which is detailed here. When there is a dispute, it generally requires a unanimous decision to resolve.
New NPCs, new roads, and unnamed natural formations may be named at whim without consulting the other consul. If one consul disagrees with the naming decision, they can bring it up with the other.
Any time a consul changes a build that the other or both were primarily responsible for, the other consul must be notified before, during, or very shortly after the change has taken place. If said change is an overhaul, then the other consul must be notified prior to making the change, and the change must wait until the other consul can play an active part in the overhaul's design process, unless the other consul waives this right.
Town members who own land within the town may request changes to a building in the town, so long as a supermajority (2/3) of town members want the change. Miles and Middie may veto any decisions of the HA, and they may additionally impose HA sanctions unilaterally, except in ways that would violate their co-consul relationship as defined in the town's general constitution.
Delta needs to earn enough in tax to pay for the daily upkeep of its plots.
The options for this are a liquidity tax (or "[Demurrage]"), which can be a percent or a lump-sum, and a plot tax.
Citizens are removed from town if they fail to pay the liquidity tax, so we should set that to a percentage so that no-one will ever be kicked due to inability to pay. Even if we decide not to use a liquidity tax, we should never let this be 0%, since we'd be missing out on a major source of revenue that would have very little impact on the citizenry. Additionally, liquidity taxes are known to increase monetary velocity and encourage investment. And if we can fund our upkeep with other taxes, then we can use the money from the liquidity tax to expand. So, the floor for the liquidity tax must be 1%.
Plot taxes should be at least $1, in order to cover the cost of their upkeep. This works well for privately-owned plots, but publicly-owned plots cannot benefit from a plot-tax, and must instead come out of the town bank.
The cost of public plots should obviously be spread evenly among the citizenry.
We could simply take the town's daily upkeep and divide it by the number of citizens, and then set a lump-sum liquidity tax, This would guarantee that the bills are paid, but it has the downside of kicking bankrupt town members, when we would instead prefer to keep them, and allow them to buy another plot once they are again solvent.
We could also just increase the percentage liquidity tax to cover expenses, but the problem there is we would have no idea how much money we'd be making, since liquidity can vary dramatically from day-to-day, and there are ways to completely avoid a liquidity tax by offshoring your assets. The lack of penalties for inability to pay just increase the risk of this.
Another option, is to divide the town upkeep by the number of privately-owned plots, and use that number for a lump-sum plot tax. This ensures the bills are paid, and it doesn't have the main disadvantage of the lump-sum liquidity tax. It incentivizes people to own less land and to do as much as they can in as little space as possible. This ultimately means fewer plots need to be bought for the town. Additionally, if someone is unable to pay their plot tax, they are automatically evicted from their land so that someone else may move in. This all seems good. Performing taxes in this way is functionally Georgist, albeit not necessarily ideologically so.
This works well, but can yield a fractional value. Towny taxes have to be whole numbers, so we need to round. We could round down and allow the liquidity tax and pre-existing town bank to pick up the slack, but the safer option is to just always round up.
Okay, so we set the liquidity tax to 1% and the plot tax to ceil(town_plots * plot_upkeep) / private_plots. Problem solved, right?
Well, almost. Towny makes us set three different kinds of plot taxes: normal, shop, and embassy. The latter two refer to plots that have been set to shop or embassy with the /plot set TYPE command.
So, the question becomes: Should shop and embassy plots pay what normal plots do?
If we set the shop plot tax higher than the default plot tax, then we will discourage the creation of shops, which is something we don't want to do.
However, if we set the shop plot tax lower than the default tax, then people will be incentivized to declare *every* plot they own to be a shop plot, regardless of whether it will be used like one.
Given these two scenarios, the only option is to set the shop plot tax to be the same as the normal plot tax.
Having an embassy tax at all discourages people from other towns from building in Delta, which is something we don't want. However, not having one would mean that people who want to live in Delta but don't want to pay tax, can be townless or in a cheaper town, while still living full-time in their embassy in Delta, essentially for free. This incentive exists for as long as the embassy tax is lower than the normal plot tax; so the best option is to have it be the same as the normal plot tax.
- Liquidity tax:
1% - Plot tax:
ceil(town_plots * plot_upkeep) / private_plots -
shopplot tax: (same as normal plot tax) -
embassyplot tax: (same as normal plot tax)
The base price for any plot should be what the town spent to buy it in the first place: $1000; this should then be modified per the plot's circumstances.
Embassy plots should be 2x that, in order to cover the revenue we lose by their not paying the liquidity tax that residents pay, and due to the fact that they don't typically help the town economy.
Waterfront property, though somewhat common in Delta due to its being a coastal city at the mouth of a river, is still rarer than inland property, and comes with the convenience of boats and good views. As such, waterfront property should have a value 2x normal.
Cramped property (property that has no buffer between it and pre-existing buildings) has less room for construction, and so is worth 0.5x normal.
Property in Oldtown has the best access to town amenities, and is fully protected by the wall. These plots are also very limited. As such, property in Oldtown should be worth 2x the default price.