@ajfirecracker said in SMIP Podcast #64: Amonkhet Preview, Eternal Weekend Europe and a Restricted Mentor:
The legal standard of "narrow tailoring" is simply inapplicable. When you insist on narrow tailoring, and you also insist that the target of that narrow tailoring is anything other than Gush, you make it artificially easy to preserve Gush.
Your post reveals a deep misunderstanding of the concept of "narrow tailoring," and several related conceptual errors.
Narrow tailoring is simply the idea that a policy objective be accomplished by a tight means-end fit. It is completely agnostic regarding the goal or objective.
As a legal principle, it is used to by reviewing courts to ensure that policymakers aren't sweeping more broadly than necessary - overbreadth or overinclusiveness - so that the regulations or laws aren't causing unintentional harms. (Examples include speech restrictions that may inadvertently infringe first amendment rights or a zoning or land use ordinance that, say, seeks to regulate the location of certain kinds of businesses but ultimately infringes on legitimate property rights.)
Banned and Restricted List policy provides a perfect analog to apply this concept. It does so by requiring the DCI to first define the problem, and then to select the restriction that is most narrowly tailored to solving that problem, and sweeping no broader than necessary. In practice, this may mean one restriction that is capable of solving a problem rather than two.
What you are getting tripped up on here is that you are confusing the narrow tailoring element with the determination or selection of an objective. Those are two separate steps.
The first step is to define the problem or objective. You said "you also insist that the target of that narrow tailoring is anything other than Gush, you make it artificially easy to preserve Gush. "
The premise is erroneous. It's not up to ME to define the problem. What I said in the podcast is this: The initial threshold inquiry is to decide whether there is a problem or not. IF The DCI decides that there is a problem, then it needs to define the problem.
Your quote above suggests that I am defining the problem as "not Gush." That's not at all what I said. Listen again to that segment of the podcast.
What I said is that I have only heard two problems or objectives articulated:
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That the Gush Mentor deck is a problem
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That Gush crowds out other blue decks.
Yes, I've argued that the second is not a legitimate reason to restrict a card, for a variety of reasons I will not rehash here. But I've NEVER presumed that the 2nd is not an objective that some players have identified for policy redress.
More problematically, any time you insist on narrow tailoring, the remedy will be incredibly sensitive to how you define the problem to be solved.
Of course! That's a feature, not a bug! That's the entire point of narrow tailoring!
In fact, that's the entire point of that segment of the podcast. We must insist on clearly defining the problem so that the policy mechanism avoids overbreadth and overinclusiveness.
Narrowly targeting Gush Mentor and narrowly targeting Gush tokens decks as a class will produce wildly different policies
Exactly! That's the point!
When you insist that "the problem" be defined a single narrow way, you are insisting that all players have the same preferences in order to produce a restriction. This is obviously absurd.
It's only absurd because you added an absurd step in between. Insisting that the policymaker settle upon a a clear definition of the problem does not mean that all players share the same view of what constitutes the problem.
Players can think Oath of Druids or Bazaar of Baghdad (or Gitaxian Probe) is a problem without the DCI believing that. People can think whatever they want. Similarly, a city council does not have to act on behalf of a single enraged constituent (or group) complaining about fluoridated water or a proposed apartment building. Vintage players are able to hold their own ideas about what the greater good is, just as any set of constituents may relative to any policymaker.
I know that the DCI believes that there should be consensus that a problem exists before they act. I'm simply insisting on an additional step: that not only should there be consensus that a problem exists, but consensus and then clarity on how to define that problem before they act. That doesn't mean washing out the varied views on how to articulate the problem or what kinds or types of problems exist.
Just as city councils or other legislative bodies don't usually act in response to a single enraged constituent, nor should the DCI act on minority concerns about Vintage. Rather, there should be consensus that there is a problem and consensus on what that problem is before acting. But requiring consensus on problem definition before a policy response does not require anyone to conform to the consensus view; that's just how democracies and other utilitarian systems, like the DCI's management of the B&R, operate. Only if consensus is forged on the problem first, will the policy solution maximize player happiness and satisfaction in the format.
Instead, you should be willing to look at different points of view. If almost everyone wants Gush restricted for different reasons, it should probably be restricted even if no single reason is convincing to you personally.
No! This isn't about me or what I personally believe or not. It's about the policymaker or regulator - The DCI - defining the problem.
YES, of course there are a many different points of view! But requiring the DCI - and by extension to the community - to come to a consensus first on how to define the problem - is not only logical, it's sensible.
If you pursue a restricted list policy that is scattershot - that tries to accommodate conflicting points of view rather than a consensus view - then you result in different restrictions.
As I said, I've only heard (up to the point of recording) two particular objectives articulated in connection with the current debate over the Gush Mentor deck. My argument is that the DCI - and the community - needs to decide which problem it's trying to solve first (after satisfying the initial threshold question of whether there is a problem or not), and then design a narrowly tailored policy response.
In that framework, the belief that you have to identify a single underlying problem (which is separate from the expressed wishes of players) and address it using the best mechanism you individually devise is clearly misplaced.
It's not misplaced at all. It's the only way to ensure that we have as few restrictions as possible and that the restriction produces as little harm as possible.
You cannot escape subjectivity.
Of course not. But you are confusing means and ends, the intervention and the objective. Any policy devised by any policymaker at root will be based upon values, preferences, and many other subjective qualities.
Whenever a city council devises an ordinances or a legislature enacts a statute, it is doing so based upon subjective elements. Courts call this the "government interest." The analog here might be the "Vintage interest."
The ends here are necessarily subjective - it is a function of the Vintage player base's preference set. But the means to get there is less so. Once an objective has consensus, then the DCI should select the policy intervention (the means) that is narrowly tailored to accomplish that objective.
By insisting on a tight means-end fit, we ensure that restrictions accomplish legitimate policy objectives while minimizing any broader harm.
If the DCI listens to a select minority and is cavalier with B&R policy, this is not bad because it violates some Commandment Of The Universe, but because such a decision would contradict the preferences of most players.
Exactly! That's why narrow tailoring should be insisted upon here. Without narrow tailoring, the policy intervention risks contradicting the preferences of most players.
Insisting on narrow tailoring does not require the Vintage community to wash out different points of view or insist on a false objectivity. Rather, it simply requires that the DCI decide which problem it seeks to address, and then to select the policy internvention among them that is most narrowly tailored to accomplishing that objective.