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[Azerty]

Great you're back!

[Taberone]

What even is Neoliberalism and what will make it different from the Liberal Crime Squad? Opposing an "Xenophobic, racist, sexist" agenda still kinda sounds like a Liberal Crime Squad thing, except more 2016-ish.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Two competing definitions of Neoliberalism simultaneously inform what I'm working on:

The First: The currently dominant capitalist world order, favoring free markets and free trade, and always preferring market-oriented solutions to problems over government mandates. Got poverty? Take two capitalisms and call me in the morning. Got climate change? A capitalism a day keeps the sea levels at bay. Got social safety net? It's probably too big, have you tried capitalism? If the world has problems, it's usually because you haven't applied capitalism sufficiently. In this definition, the establishment, the rulers of the world, are neoliberals: allies include the "deep state" and foreign leaders.

The Second: The recently "claimed" definition espoused in Sam Bowman's "I'm a neoliberal. Maybe you are too" blog post, with adherents including a bunch of idealistic and disproportionately young white male econ and comp sci college students on reddit. The ideological tradition here is former libertarians who think true libertarians obsess about purity rather than focusing on outcomes, and former leftists who think leftists don't give capitalism enough credit. They imagine they're the "socially liberal, economically moderate consensus", but actually hold pretty extreme views on a number of economic issues, have no real skin in the game when it comes to social issues, and routinely come into conflict with both the anti-capitalist left and the nationalist/populist right.

As such, the Neoliberalism here is:

1. On one hand, just as opposed to the "modern politics inspired" nationalist-populist right-wing dictatorship as anyone. The game is Nightmare Mode only, and they hate it as much as the left does.

2. On the other hand, unlike the LCS, they're enthusiastically and dramatically opposed to leftist attempts to overthrow the capitalist world order. Did someone say "Socialist Threat"? Oh hell no, take those smelly Marxist beards out of here; better dead than red.

3. Thematically, they're perceiving the world from a throne of privilege rather than poverty. The LCS starts in the homeless shelter. The NCS starts in your inherited family estate. The LCS lets people join after getting them fired up. The NCS gets people into a room and then immediately talks salary. The LCS sees CEOs and corporations as a force of Evil. The NCS sees CEOs and corporations as potential allies and sources of funding.

It's important to note though, that in the world of the NCS, you are the good guys. Neoliberalism is a broadly maligned label, but the game is told from your perspective, and you're not the villains. You may have privilege, but that's not the same thing as being a bunch of white supremacists. You're certainly not going to tap your cigar ash onto the servants. Those are obviously bad guy things. You're not that. You're fighting the bad guys. You're the ones -- the only ones -- with a realistic plan to achieve a guaranteed basic income. You seek a global prosperity that benefits all people and reduces world suffering. You're even pushing for social justice, just without going into absurd nonsense, like trying to legislate the existence of seventeen genders (and everyone is legally defined to be all of them, to better maximize equality, comrade).

You represent the elites of the world today, as they dream themselves to be at their most enlightened: Your enemies are the stupid and the hateful of the left and the right, the wall-builders and arsonists who would divide the world up or burn it down. You dream of one world government, and of a social contract in which the rich are allowed, no, encouraged to make as much money as they like, they need only be okay with having some of it taxed away and given to the poor.

[IsaacG]

It's important to note though, that in the world of the NCS, you are the good guys.

...

Your enemies are the stupid and the hateful of the left and the right, the wall-builders and arsonists who would divide the world up or burn it down.

The "Stupid/Evil Dichotomy".  Everyone opposed to us is either stupid, or evil.  Presenting this as an in-universe fact is what makes it funny, possibly satirical, rather than depressing and/or infuriating.

[PTTG??]

This is a beautiful project.

[Karlito]

Yes, this is great.

I'd assume President Kevin McCarthy is a randomly generated name, but uh

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Haha, yes, Kevin McCarthy was a random name. Any resemblance to the house majority leader of California is purely coincidental.

I gotta get back into it again, I was working on overhauling recruitment to make it money based when my attention was drawn to the recently released Cultist Simulator. Ended up playing that for about a week in my free time.

[moderate guardian]

I am just glad that the NCS will be able to fend off the droves of conservative neonazi crime squad and stalinist revolutionaries and preserve the liberty and freedom for all to do business and sell newspapers full of lies for profit and to sway the people's opinion. 2025 is gonna be part of the roaring 20's followed by WW3 in 2045.

[birdy51]

All I hope is that bad pick-up lines are still involved.

[Taberone]

So since this is set in 2025, I'm assuming that the political content will be more up to date than the original LCS. LCS is kinda outdated when you compare it to American politics and stuff after 2016.

[cdru]

Looks promising. I can't wait for it to be released

[The Cheshire Cat]

So since this is set in 2025, I'm assuming that the political content will be more up to date than the original LCS. LCS is kinda outdated when you compare it to American politics and stuff after 2016.

Or, if you look at it another way, kind of scarily topical. This is supposed to be a silly game! The US would never REALLY be taken over by fascists!

[Jonathan S. Fox]

The game imagines a literal dictatorship as the inciting incident. I want the game to feel more modern and relevant to current events than the original, which was inspired by US politics in the early 2000s, but I also want to make sure it's still always expressing an exaggerated version of them. There's a kind of balance there and pushing the events into a dramatic collapse of democracy is the vision I have for how to do that.

I'm currently working on recruitment; I want to emphasize money much more in this version, with your recruits collecting a salary. Following this, you can bribe anyone to join, it's just a matter of how high of a price they'll sell out for, making the choice to recruit someone otherwise difficult to recruit a resource allocation challenge. People who agree with you are relatively cheap, people with more skills are more expensive, and enemies will expect a premium before they'll sell out. But even your allies will expect something; your persuasion isn't useless, it can help to bargain down the price, but nobody will join your cause to live in revolutionary poverty.

To this end, you can only recruit people up to what you can afford using your stable income. Robbing houses may give you disposable cash on hand for one time purchases, but ongoing expenses, such as rental costs for new safehouses, and salary for new recruits, will need to paid from stable income. At the start of the game, that's your trust fund, but you may feel the need to secure additional sources of income.

I should note it's probably going to be awhile! Progress is slow because, at least at the moment, I don't have any sort of schedule for working on this; it is currently just a thing I'm doing in a bit of my free time, when I feel inspired.

[cdru]

your persuasion isn't useless, it can help to bargain down the price, but nobody will join your cause to live in revolutionary poverty.

What about Seduction and Psychology, though?

[Azerty]

I'm currently working on recruitment; I want to emphasize money much more in this version, with your recruits collecting a salary. Following this, you can bribe anyone to join, it's just a matter of how high of a price they'll sell out for, making the choice to recruit someone otherwise difficult to recruit a resource allocation challenge. People who agree with you are relatively cheap, people with more skills are more expensive, and enemies will expect a premium before they'll sell out. But even your allies will expect something; your persuasion isn't useless, it can help to bargain down the price, but nobody will join your cause to live in revolutionary poverty.

To this end, you can only recruit people up to what you can afford using your stable income. Robbing houses may give you disposable cash on hand for one time purchases, but ongoing expenses, such as rental costs for new safehouses, and salary for new recruits, will need to paid from stable income. At the start of the game, that's your trust fund, but you may feel the need to secure additional sources of income.

It is not be a novelty since we used to have to pay for house expenses, modulated by the Cooking skill. It might solve the Money For Nothing issue and make user use more disposable persons (Hippies, Illegals), love slaves and maybe kidnapped persons.