What if, on planets, we could choose between a command system, as is used now, and free enterprise? The population would be able to choose what it did. Economic growth should be faster, along with the production of all commodities, but they shouldn't produce any money unless you tax them. Their increased rate of production decreases with taxes. It shouldn't make as much money than the command system, but it should make the people much less likely to rebel or declare independance, and, as already stated, they should produce stuff faster, like maybe it should take 20% fewer colonists to create one unit of any given thing. Just as people have been talking about for the command system a sort of "quality of life" production percentage, I think not only should this be implemented there, but also in this free enterprise system. Naturally, loads of colonists will probably choose it (note: production percentages should be semi-random), and it should perform its normal funciton, except now you can tax it! And as I said before, higher tax should mean slower commodity production (including research/build), but more revenue, until eventually you reach some critical point where commerce slows down too much and the revenue of the taxes begins to drop even as the tax percentage increases. I mean, if we had a 50% sales tax or something outlandish like that, no one would spend their money, and the government wouldn't make much. Every few hours or something the production percentages should update. As I said before, it should be semi-random. Organics production should never, never get below so low the planet is consuming more than it is producing, since no society would willingly bring that upon itself. Goods and ore production should be maybe medium low usually, while energy should be much higher, since that's what we use very much today. Quality of life should be a big percentage, and build and research should be medium high usually, since that's fairly important today. But, again, we don't have a constant percentage of our population doing any one thing, so it should shift every once in a while.
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