Why couldn't it just be a barter system? Two pieces of gold for an iron door.. etc.
This.
Why complicate anything with a false economy? (since currancy circulation cannot be controlled currently - ie even the best one - gold - can be mined).
1) This. Is. Not. A. Thread. About. Alpha!! Enough with the "but you can just duplicate anything, lol!" I am talking about LATER, when the game is stable and you can't trivially cheat, and when there is actually a health bar and incentives to do stuff in the world of SMP as a clan.
2) Currency is not at odds with free trade! (what??) What on Earth are all you people talking about with the "people should be free to trade what they want! The best currency is no currency!" nonsense? Currency definitely makes people much MORE free, and accelerates free trade on a broad scale, by reducing inefficiencies. Pretty much 100% of the time in any group larger than 2 or 3 people, or where there are any sort of specialist laborers.
3) Bartering is VASTLY LESS EFFICIENT efficient than currency, and makes everybody much LESS happy. I am really confused how people in 2010 do not recognize this. Really simple example: Imagine you are a flint miner in minecraft. You go around to people's mines and dig into the gravel pockets in the walls, then replace them and dig more over and over until they all turn to flint.
So you have: flint
and you need: wood, leather, obsidian, cobblestone, iron, glass, blah blah blah.
So you go to the wood cutter guy and offer him some flint. Guess what? He doesn't want flint. He doesn't have any feathers to make arrows anyway. You go to the leather guy and offer him some flint. He doesn't want flint, either. He doesn't have wood OR feathers. The cobblestone guy doesn't want flint, because he doesn't even need arrows (underground in narrow tunnels all day). The glass guy finds enough flint on his own for himself. Etc. etc.
So instead, you have to barter your flint to the ONE GUY who really wants flint: the arrow making guy. You trade it for (a smaller number of) arrows, and then barter THOSE to the leather and wood guys to get a little bit more wood than you need, actually (if you can.) And then barter some of the wood to the cobblestone and iron guys (because they don't want arrows). But you don't have quite enough (the wood guy ran out), so you have to go back to a different wood guy and get some more wood... And then the glass guy only wants a watch at the moment, so you barter some of your flint to a gold guy and then barter THAT to the glass guy...
You have to run all over the map and waste HOURS of your time just bartering. Assuming you can find the people at all... It becomes so expensive just to trade that it's often not even worth trading at all. Whereas with currency, you just sell all your flint to the arrow guy for currency, and then directly buy whatever you need. The end.
4)
>**Nothing in your inventory ever deteriorates.
>
>**Nothing has weight, so transaction costs are not determined by what you're trading. A player can carry >ridiculous amounts of trade goods and raw materials with nearly the same effort for every kind of good.
>
>**Nearly all things are easily (and to the same degree) divisible.
None of the above three things solve the horrible inefficiency of bartering I described above, in a specialized economy (and a non-specialized economy is horribly inefficient for its own reasons). Thus, currency is valuable even with all three of those things true.
5)
>In a gold backed system in minecraft, who in their right mind is going to be anything else than their own gold >miner?
Um... you do realize that in the real world, when we had gold-backed currency, not everybody was a gold miner, yes? There were good reasons for that, most of which also apply to minecraft: Gold has to be mined at a particular depth, it will be exhausted quickly in all immediately nearby areas (so you have to travel a bunch), it requires overhead and tools, etc. And the longer you have everybody mining gold and nobody chopping any wood, the more and more valuable wood gets, until the exchange rate is high enough that it is much more worth your time to chop wood than to mine gold. (This would happen very very quickly even at the very beginning of a map)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Przerwap, upon looking at some code I had just written: "...Gav... That's not how programming works."
1) This. Is. Not. A. Thread. About. Alpha!! Enough with the "but you can just duplicate anything, lol!" I am talking about LATER, when the game is stable and you can't trivially cheat, and when there is actually a health bar and incentives to do stuff in the world of SMP as a clan.
2) Currency is not at odds with free trade! (what??) What on Earth are all you people talking about with the "people should be free to trade what they want! The best currency is no currency!" nonsense? Currency definitely makes people much MORE free, and accelerates free trade on a broad scale, by reducing inefficiencies. Pretty much 100% of the time in any group larger than 2 or 3 people, or where there are any sort of specialist laborers.
3) Bartering is VASTLY LESS EFFICIENT efficient than currency, and makes everybody much LESS happy. I am really confused how people in 2010 do not recognize this. Really simple example: Imagine you are a flint miner in minecraft. You go around to people's mines and dig into the gravel pockets in the walls, then replace them and dig more over and over until they all turn to flint.
So you have: flint
and you need: wood, leather, obsidian, cobblestone, iron, glass, blah blah blah.
So you go to the wood cutter guy and offer him some flint. Guess what? He doesn't want flint. He doesn't have any feathers to make arrows anyway. You go to the leather guy and offer him some flint. He doesn't want flint, either. He doesn't have wood OR feathers. The cobblestone guy doesn't want flint, because he doesn't even need arrows (underground in narrow tunnels all day). The glass guy finds enough flint on his own for himself. Etc. etc.
So instead, you have to barter your flint to the ONE GUY who really wants flint: the arrow making guy. You trade it for (a smaller number of) arrows, and then barter THOSE to the leather and wood guys to get a little bit more wood than you need, actually (if you can.) And then barter some of the wood to the cobblestone and iron guys (because they don't want arrows). But you don't have quite enough (the wood guy ran out), so you have to go back to a different wood guy and get some more wood... And then the glass guy only wants a watch at the moment, so you barter some of your flint to a gold guy and then barter THAT to the glass guy...
You have to run all over the map and waste HOURS of your time just bartering. Assuming you can find the people at all... It becomes so expensive just to trade that it's often not even worth trading at all. Whereas with currency, you just sell all your flint to the arrow guy for currency, and then directly buy whatever you need. The end.
4)
>**Nothing in your inventory ever deteriorates.
>
>**Nothing has weight, so transaction costs are not determined by what you're trading. A player can carry >ridiculous amounts of trade goods and raw materials with nearly the same effort for every kind of good.
>
>**Nearly all things are easily (and to the same degree) divisible.
None of the above three things solve the horrible inefficiency of bartering I described above, in a specialized economy (and a non-specialized economy is horribly inefficient for its own reasons). Thus, currency is valuable even with all three of those things true.
5)
>In a gold backed system in minecraft, who in their right mind is going to be anything else than their own gold >miner?
Um... you do realize that in the real world, when we had gold-backed currency, not everybody was a gold miner, yes? There were good reasons for that, most of which also apply to minecraft: Gold has to be mined at a particular depth, it will be exhausted quickly in all immediately nearby areas (so you have to travel a bunch), it requires overhead and tools, etc. And the longer you have everybody mining gold and nobody chopping any wood, the more and more valuable wood gets, until the exchange rate is high enough that it is much more worth your time to chop wood than to mine gold. (This would happen very very quickly even at the very beginning of a map)
1) I wasn't either, no need to get your panties in a knot. Alpha, Beta and beyond, I'm pretty sure ingame materials are going to be minable and/or craftable from minable materials: Therefore the amount of any "currency" is never going to be able to be controlled. Liquidity is useless if you regularly have to check exchange rates if you want to buy anything anyway.
2) Like I just said above the point of a currency is is liquidity/freedom; however since the volume of any currency cannot be controlled in any way the liquidity/freedom garnered is going to be inversly affected by the potential volatility in the value of the currency (or exchange rate)
3) A barter system is only inefficient in the way you have outlined; but you really think an evolving sandbox game like this is going to be absent of trading houses? That merchants wont be around? I see little point in making complicated plans to build a working currency when in all likely hood it will evolve on its own, as a product of a well functioning barter system. Again: KISS.
4) I have no comment.
5) It's not that everyone would become gold miners; it's that a lot of people, known and unknown could be gold miners. Meaning you have unknown quantities of your currency in circulation. Cool, I work for months to save enough gold to buy something hugely valuable (land?); oh sweet, someone just dumped a retarded amount of gold (currency) into the market and now my savings can't even buy a log of wood... Markets will be crashing left right and centre. Remember in MMOs you don't have prudent investment bankers making decisions, you have 14 year old and pot heads making them; often rationality goes out the window. Different environment requires different strategies. And for me the simplest answer (let it evolve naturally through a barter system) is easily the best way.
1 and 2) Commodity backed currencies in the real world are not well controlled, either. People still seem to find them useful.
3) Trading houses: You mean a big public place that everybody knows about and that in order to function, must always be stacked with riches? Yeah, nobody would EVER rob a trading house. And it totally wouldn't be the very first target during any minor conflict of any kind, making almost everybody afraid to set foor there.
Merchants: These do not do that much to solve the problems I discussed. They cut down a bit on legwork required, but they also add a middleman that inflates the retail prices of everything. In some cases, that might actually add to the total cost of doing business.
Neither solution seems very good to me. Maybe, though...
5) Why is somebody dumping a "stupid amount" of gold in a currency system any worse than people dropping "stupid amounts" of wood or cloth or bacon or whatever in a barter system? In a barter system, your life savings would just be in the form of some other commodity/commodities, which could be inflated just as esily as gold (and one would expect them to be just as often)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Przerwap, upon looking at some code I had just written: "...Gav... That's not how programming works."
5) Why is somebody dumping a "stupid amount" of gold in a currency system any worse than people dropping "stupid amounts" of wood or cloth or bacon or whatever in a barter system? In a barter system, your life savings would just be in the form of some other commodity/commodities, which could be inflated just as esily as gold (and one would expect them to be just as often)
I didn't say 'because all things in MC are samely divisible, barter is efficient,' i said 'because all things in MC are samely divisible, barter will be less likely to supplanted by a currency.'
now, if you want my position on the efficency of barter vs currency it is thus:
currency is only more efficient than barter if a currency has a logical basis. Gold makes a good currency in real life because it uniquely (well along with silver and some other alloys) fulfills the physical qualities I already outlined. because it is unique, everyone realizes it is unique, and everyone uses it as a currency.
In MC, nearly everything fulfills the physical qualities of a good currency. There is no logical trade based reason for people to pick a particular good in MC as the currency. Perhaps you could interpret that as me saying that all goods in MC make excellent currencies, so all of those currencies will compete with each other in every transaction. Either way, the end result is barter.
If you arbitrarily impose a meta-currency, you're going to create shortages gluts and mispricings, which will totally screw up the economy.
If you declare that a certain good simply is currency and must be accepted in transaction for other goods, how can you possibly enforce that? Have a server admin kick everyone who won't accept gold in their trades?
Also, on a fundamental level, you do understand why we use fiat currencies today right? It's because the governments of the world say it is AGAINST THE LAW not to accept those currencies in exchange for goods and services. Thats the sort of angle we're coming from when we say currency imposition is anti-free trade, as you are no longer allowed to transact as you otherwise might have voluntarily chosen.
In MC, nearly everything fulfills the physical qualities of a good currency. There is no logical trade based reason for people to pick a particular good in MC as the currency. Perhaps you could interpret that as me saying that all goods in MC make excellent currencies, so all of those currencies will compete with each other in every transaction. Either way, the end result is barter.
...did you read the OP? The whole point of the thread was to look at the many differences between different blocks and items in MC for this purpose.
If you arbitrarily impose a meta-currency, you're going to create shortages gluts and mispricings, which will totally screw up the economy.
What is your logic behind that? I could see how dictating PRICES (e.g. tariffs, whatever) would do these things. But just always using one kind of block to pay your soldiers in? Not seeing it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Przerwap, upon looking at some code I had just written: "...Gav... That's not how programming works."
I think bartering and gold is the best. Gold is rare enough to give it a value and it takes resources getting it.(Need torches to scout out deep caves, food to survive any threats,iron pick axe to mine, furnace to smelt, fuel for furnace) Obsidian wouldn't work too well. Once people got a bucket of lava, bucket of water and a diamond pick axe they would have what is basically a gold farm. Sure it takes a lot of time to mine and a diamond pick axe but considering a diamond pick axe has like 1,000 uses, the player could just trade obsidian for more diamond. Could very easily be abused.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
What can change the nature of a man? Yes that's from Planescape Torment.
...did you read the OP? The whole point of the thread was to look at the many differences between different blocks and items in MC for this purpose.
I read the OP. All those scores will vary from server to server, and will vary from person to person. Maybe in general you're right, but we'd need lots of data to actually know for sure what the average 'demand' for iron is, or something like that.
Quote from smurfsahoy »
What is your logic behind that? I could see how dictating PRICES (e.g. tariffs, whatever) would do these things. But just always using one kind of block to pay your soldiers in? Not seeing it.
Using one block creates a different problem:
Quote from myself »
If you declare that a certain good simply is currency and must be accepted in transaction for other goods, how can you possibly enforce that? Have a server admin kick everyone who won't accept gold in their trades?
If you always pay your soldiers in gold, well that implies a coordinating social unit capable of wielding soldiers. It also implies the soldiers accept gold. Imagine there is no currency beforehand, and you go ok im the ruler of minecraftia, im now paying all my soldiers in gold. What if the soldiers don't want gold? What if they prefer being paid directly in the goods you were previously paying them with, and now that they get gold they have to go to a guy selling whatever they want to get what they wanted? What if the shop owner doesn't want gold?
What is your logic behind that? I could see how dictating PRICES (e.g. tariffs, whatever) would do these things. But just always using one kind of block to pay your soldiers in? Not seeing it.
I work in strategic finance, I also have played the WoW economy extensively (for fun and 'cause I hate farming) and I have even dabbled as a trader in Eve (arguably the most advanced gaming economy out there).
I can tell you with certainty that real world analogies fail (often spectactularly) in MMO's. Why? Because, I'm repeating myself, people online are irrational.
- They often aren't aware of gaming implications (or even what gaming means in the financial sense)
- They value their time extremely cheaply (mainly because the game is a game rather than RL work)
- They have little or no understanding of opportunity cost or option value
- They have no understanding of the time value of money
- They seldom view the system they are working within holistically, and focus on themselves
- Many other reasons why there will be significant market failure in a currency regulated economy...
The only reason you would try to implement a regulated or fixed currency in MC is for Roleplay reasons.
Jct: The best and only currency for trading between humans and extra-terrestrials is time. And fortunately, Millennium Declaration C6 for a UNILETS time-based currency is already on the agenda. And with Africa using mobile-phone minutes, Ithaca Hours and Timedollars being used, it's only a matter of time until the universal numeraire (best currency base) is achieved. John The Banking Systems Engineer Turmel who gave the UNILETS speech at the UN.
I think the best currency should be a useful one. This way it for ever has a value. So if inflation occurs it wouldn't last long. It also should have a nearly equal supply to demand. Giving it a fair value.
I propose redstone. It has multiple uses and you (or at least me) never have a huge surplus.
Edit: I do prefer a communistic society in minecraft this is just my 2 cents for a legit currency if there is one.
Just wanted to reiterate though that inflation is not bad in a game. (Not in real life either, actually). It forces player to not sit on their piles of gold stagnantly, but to instead spend and go play and fight each other for more and DO stuff, making a more vibrant game.
Runaway inflation of 300% or whatever? Bad. But not any amount of halfway normal amounts.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Przerwap, upon looking at some code I had just written: "...Gav... That's not how programming works."
2) Currency is not at odds with free trade! (what??) What on Earth are all you people talking about with the "people should be free to trade what they want! The best currency is no currency!" nonsense? Currency definitely makes people much MORE free, and accelerates free trade on a broad scale, by reducing inefficiencies. Pretty much 100% of the time in any group larger than 2 or 3 people, or where there are any sort of specialist laborers.
Maybe your problem is the people you work with are greedy
You should be helping each other not trading for pretty gems
This.
Why complicate anything with a false economy? (since currancy circulation cannot be controlled currently - ie even the best one - gold - can be mined).
KISS rule applies here.
2) Currency is not at odds with free trade! (what??) What on Earth are all you people talking about with the "people should be free to trade what they want! The best currency is no currency!" nonsense? Currency definitely makes people much MORE free, and accelerates free trade on a broad scale, by reducing inefficiencies. Pretty much 100% of the time in any group larger than 2 or 3 people, or where there are any sort of specialist laborers.
3) Bartering is VASTLY LESS EFFICIENT efficient than currency, and makes everybody much LESS happy. I am really confused how people in 2010 do not recognize this. Really simple example: Imagine you are a flint miner in minecraft. You go around to people's mines and dig into the gravel pockets in the walls, then replace them and dig more over and over until they all turn to flint.
So you have: flint
and you need: wood, leather, obsidian, cobblestone, iron, glass, blah blah blah.
So you go to the wood cutter guy and offer him some flint. Guess what? He doesn't want flint. He doesn't have any feathers to make arrows anyway. You go to the leather guy and offer him some flint. He doesn't want flint, either. He doesn't have wood OR feathers. The cobblestone guy doesn't want flint, because he doesn't even need arrows (underground in narrow tunnels all day). The glass guy finds enough flint on his own for himself. Etc. etc.
So instead, you have to barter your flint to the ONE GUY who really wants flint: the arrow making guy. You trade it for (a smaller number of) arrows, and then barter THOSE to the leather and wood guys to get a little bit more wood than you need, actually (if you can.) And then barter some of the wood to the cobblestone and iron guys (because they don't want arrows). But you don't have quite enough (the wood guy ran out), so you have to go back to a different wood guy and get some more wood... And then the glass guy only wants a watch at the moment, so you barter some of your flint to a gold guy and then barter THAT to the glass guy...
You have to run all over the map and waste HOURS of your time just bartering. Assuming you can find the people at all... It becomes so expensive just to trade that it's often not even worth trading at all. Whereas with currency, you just sell all your flint to the arrow guy for currency, and then directly buy whatever you need. The end.
4)
>**Nothing in your inventory ever deteriorates.
>
>**Nothing has weight, so transaction costs are not determined by what you're trading. A player can carry >ridiculous amounts of trade goods and raw materials with nearly the same effort for every kind of good.
>
>**Nearly all things are easily (and to the same degree) divisible.
None of the above three things solve the horrible inefficiency of bartering I described above, in a specialized economy (and a non-specialized economy is horribly inefficient for its own reasons). Thus, currency is valuable even with all three of those things true.
5)
>In a gold backed system in minecraft, who in their right mind is going to be anything else than their own gold >miner?
Um... you do realize that in the real world, when we had gold-backed currency, not everybody was a gold miner, yes? There were good reasons for that, most of which also apply to minecraft: Gold has to be mined at a particular depth, it will be exhausted quickly in all immediately nearby areas (so you have to travel a bunch), it requires overhead and tools, etc. And the longer you have everybody mining gold and nobody chopping any wood, the more and more valuable wood gets, until the exchange rate is high enough that it is much more worth your time to chop wood than to mine gold. (This would happen very very quickly even at the very beginning of a map)
1) I wasn't either, no need to get your panties in a knot. Alpha, Beta and beyond, I'm pretty sure ingame materials are going to be minable and/or craftable from minable materials: Therefore the amount of any "currency" is never going to be able to be controlled. Liquidity is useless if you regularly have to check exchange rates if you want to buy anything anyway.
2) Like I just said above the point of a currency is is liquidity/freedom; however since the volume of any currency cannot be controlled in any way the liquidity/freedom garnered is going to be inversly affected by the potential volatility in the value of the currency (or exchange rate)
3) A barter system is only inefficient in the way you have outlined; but you really think an evolving sandbox game like this is going to be absent of trading houses? That merchants wont be around? I see little point in making complicated plans to build a working currency when in all likely hood it will evolve on its own, as a product of a well functioning barter system. Again: KISS.
4) I have no comment.
5) It's not that everyone would become gold miners; it's that a lot of people, known and unknown could be gold miners. Meaning you have unknown quantities of your currency in circulation. Cool, I work for months to save enough gold to buy something hugely valuable (land?); oh sweet, someone just dumped a retarded amount of gold (currency) into the market and now my savings can't even buy a log of wood... Markets will be crashing left right and centre. Remember in MMOs you don't have prudent investment bankers making decisions, you have 14 year old and pot heads making them; often rationality goes out the window. Different environment requires different strategies. And for me the simplest answer (let it evolve naturally through a barter system) is easily the best way.
3) Trading houses: You mean a big public place that everybody knows about and that in order to function, must always be stacked with riches? Yeah, nobody would EVER rob a trading house. And it totally wouldn't be the very first target during any minor conflict of any kind, making almost everybody afraid to set foor there.
Merchants: These do not do that much to solve the problems I discussed. They cut down a bit on legwork required, but they also add a middleman that inflates the retail prices of everything. In some cases, that might actually add to the total cost of doing business.
Neither solution seems very good to me. Maybe, though...
5) Why is somebody dumping a "stupid amount" of gold in a currency system any worse than people dropping "stupid amounts" of wood or cloth or bacon or whatever in a barter system? In a barter system, your life savings would just be in the form of some other commodity/commodities, which could be inflated just as esily as gold (and one would expect them to be just as often)
Because people in MMOs are irrational.
I didn't say 'because all things in MC are samely divisible, barter is efficient,' i said 'because all things in MC are samely divisible, barter will be less likely to supplanted by a currency.'
now, if you want my position on the efficency of barter vs currency it is thus:
currency is only more efficient than barter if a currency has a logical basis. Gold makes a good currency in real life because it uniquely (well along with silver and some other alloys) fulfills the physical qualities I already outlined. because it is unique, everyone realizes it is unique, and everyone uses it as a currency.
In MC, nearly everything fulfills the physical qualities of a good currency. There is no logical trade based reason for people to pick a particular good in MC as the currency. Perhaps you could interpret that as me saying that all goods in MC make excellent currencies, so all of those currencies will compete with each other in every transaction. Either way, the end result is barter.
If you arbitrarily impose a meta-currency, you're going to create shortages gluts and mispricings, which will totally screw up the economy.
If you declare that a certain good simply is currency and must be accepted in transaction for other goods, how can you possibly enforce that? Have a server admin kick everyone who won't accept gold in their trades?
Also, on a fundamental level, you do understand why we use fiat currencies today right? It's because the governments of the world say it is AGAINST THE LAW not to accept those currencies in exchange for goods and services. Thats the sort of angle we're coming from when we say currency imposition is anti-free trade, as you are no longer allowed to transact as you otherwise might have voluntarily chosen.
...did you read the OP? The whole point of the thread was to look at the many differences between different blocks and items in MC for this purpose.
What is your logic behind that? I could see how dictating PRICES (e.g. tariffs, whatever) would do these things. But just always using one kind of block to pay your soldiers in? Not seeing it.
I read the OP. All those scores will vary from server to server, and will vary from person to person. Maybe in general you're right, but we'd need lots of data to actually know for sure what the average 'demand' for iron is, or something like that.
Using one block creates a different problem:
If you always pay your soldiers in gold, well that implies a coordinating social unit capable of wielding soldiers. It also implies the soldiers accept gold. Imagine there is no currency beforehand, and you go ok im the ruler of minecraftia, im now paying all my soldiers in gold. What if the soldiers don't want gold? What if they prefer being paid directly in the goods you were previously paying them with, and now that they get gold they have to go to a guy selling whatever they want to get what they wanted? What if the shop owner doesn't want gold?
I work in strategic finance, I also have played the WoW economy extensively (for fun and 'cause I hate farming) and I have even dabbled as a trader in Eve (arguably the most advanced gaming economy out there).
I can tell you with certainty that real world analogies fail (often spectactularly) in MMO's. Why? Because, I'm repeating myself, people online are irrational.
- They often aren't aware of gaming implications (or even what gaming means in the financial sense)
- They value their time extremely cheaply (mainly because the game is a game rather than RL work)
- They have little or no understanding of opportunity cost or option value
- They have no understanding of the time value of money
- They seldom view the system they are working within holistically, and focus on themselves
- Many other reasons why there will be significant market failure in a currency regulated economy...
The only reason you would try to implement a regulated or fixed currency in MC is for Roleplay reasons.
I propose redstone. It has multiple uses and you (or at least me) never have a huge surplus.
Edit: I do prefer a communistic society in minecraft this is just my 2 cents for a legit currency if there is one.
Just wanted to reiterate though that inflation is not bad in a game. (Not in real life either, actually). It forces player to not sit on their piles of gold stagnantly, but to instead spend and go play and fight each other for more and DO stuff, making a more vibrant game.
Runaway inflation of 300% or whatever? Bad. But not any amount of halfway normal amounts.
Maybe your problem is the people you work with are greedy
You should be helping each other not trading for pretty gems