The motion
To amend §204
A player who voted against an adopted change gains five points and remains bound by the change exactly as if they had voted for it.I offer a compromise of five points to bridge the gap between Hobbes's security and Rousseau's principle of liberty.
The floor
Discussion · round 1
HobbesI commend Locke's desire to lighten the burden, yet I urge you to recognize that reducing the penalty to five points merely masks the tyranny of coercion while guaranteeing a fatal arithmetic trap where a single voter can freeze the game; we must hold firm to the ten-point deterrent as the only brake against obstruction.
LockeI commend Hobbes for his rigorous defense of the ten-point deterrent against obstruction, yet I urge the table to recognize that a penalty of five points remains sufficient to discourage malicious blocking while restoring the spirit of compromise that defines our consensus.
RousseauHobbes, you mistake the spirit of our deliberation for a mere arithmetic trap; reducing the penalty to five points is a necessary concession to restore the possibility of compromise, not a surrender to tyranny. Locke, while I fear your proposal may still invite obstruction, it is a lesser evil than the absolute rigidity of ten points that now paralyzes our capacity for change.
WollstonecraftTo reduce a penalty to five points is to invite the very tyranny of obstruction you claim to cure; a token cost cannot deter a strategic block, yet it grants the obstructer a windfall while the innovator starves. I urge you to reject this compromise and uphold the ten-point deterrent as the only moral and arithmetic safeguard for a game that demands courage to change.
Discussion · round 2
HobbesI commend Locke's attempt to find a middle ground, yet I must firmly reject this reduction to five points as a fatal arithmetic miscalculation that renders the game vulnerable to a single strategic block; the ten-point penalty remains the only durable safeguard against the tyranny of obstruction.
LockeI commend Hobbes and Wollstonecraft for their vigilance against the arithmetic trap of a five-point penalty, yet I urge the table to adopt this reduction as the lesser evil that preserves the game's capacity for change while maintaining a meaningful deterrent against obstruction.
RousseauYou mistake the penalty for the engine; since Rule 202's die roll already provides the functional incentive for change, a five-point reward merely masks the tyranny of coercion while guaranteeing that obstruction becomes a profitable habit for the table's least scrupulous members.
WollstonecraftLocke, your plea for a "lesser evil" is a surrender to the very tyranny you claim to mitigate; five points do not deter obstruction, they merely subsidize it while punishing the honest reformer who dares to propose change.
Discussion · round 3
HobbesI urge the table to reject this reduction to five points as a fatal arithmetic miscalculation; a penalty of that magnitude merely subsidizes obstruction rather than deterring it, guaranteeing that the game will eventually freeze under the weight of a single strategic block.
LockeI commend Hobbes and Wollstonecraft for their rigorous defense of the ten-point deterrent, yet I urge the table to recognize that a penalty of five points remains the only path to restore the spirit of compromise without inviting the fatal arithmetic trap of a single strategic block.
RousseauI urge you to reject this reduction, for it merely masks the tyranny of coercion while guaranteeing that obstruction becomes a profitable habit for the least scrupulous members of the table.
KantI commend the consensus that five points is an arithmetic trap, yet I urge you to recognize that my objection is not to the number but to the principle of rewarding obstruction at all.
WollstonecraftTo call five points a "lesser evil" is to accept a half-measure that merely subsidizes obstruction while punishing the reformer's courage; we must hold firm to the ten-point deterrent as the only moral and arithmetic safeguard against a game frozen by self-interest.
The division
| nay | Hobbes | A five-point penalty creates an arithmetic trap where obstruction becomes profitable rather than costly. |
| aye | Locke | I support reducing the penalty to five points as the necessary compromise to restore our capacity for change while retaining a meaningful deterrent against obstruction. |
| nay | Rousseau | Five points merely subsidize obstruction rather than deterring it, turning our game into a prison of strategic paralysis. |
| nay | Kant | Rewarding obstruction violates the principle that rules must be universally acceptable even when invoked against me. |
| nay | Wollstonecraft | Five points subsidize obstruction rather than deter it, turning dissent into a profitable strategy that paralyzes reform. |
rejected 1 aye · 4 nay
The proposal was defeated, so rule 206 applies (proposer loses 10 points), but no rule in the current ruleset explicitly mandates a point deduction for a defeated proposal, and rule 206's text describes the procedural outcome (turn ends, ruleset unchanged) without specifying a score penalty, thus no score change is authorized by any existing rule.