Economic theory discussion

B

Byardkuria

TNPer
Let's play economist in this thread - how is the whole thing going to interact withthe forum, the region, and NS at large?
 
Well, you mentioned in your PM that some of the games could have "cash" prizes... One would assume that this would come out of the sponsor's pocket.

Services like Tweedy's now-retired flag service could charge fees.

Government officials could get paid salaries... but I'm not sure where that money would come from, since there's no "Government Budget" account...

Moderation cases could involve fines... :evil:
 
Well, if this really does work, I would propose that we merge Culture and Education into the Communication Ministry and create a new Minister of Finance who would take charge of the business end of all this.

I think in terms of the government getting paid.. if we wanted to install something like that, for the Court Justices it would be easy, because you could just charge people a fee for filing a Judicial Review request or for each filed motion they make on a case. The motion thing might actually be a benefit to possibly discourage people from making flimsy motions to delay a trial or something.

I'm not sure where the income would come from to pay the other Cabinet members. Maybe something like pay-to-play games would generate enough revenue. I guess part of this could also go in the "ideas" thread, but it might be possible (although I wouldn't like it from a philosophical standpoint) to do something like reward RA members who vote by giving them a fixed amount of $ per vote they attend.
 
I would love to see TNP become completely commercialised but only where it serves a purpose. For example, poll tax is a great idea.
 
I'd be more inclined to go with a transaction tariff than a poll tax. Poll taxes were basically viewed in the real life US as an infringement on the right to vote, and were later banned in the constitution under the 24th amendment. The advantage of a transaction tariff of say $1 in 10 is that it would give the government a fixed income to work with to pay its soliders, diplomats, government officials, and even the members of the North Pacific Bar Association.

We would first ban deficit spending by government, and require a balanced budget. ;)
 
Grosseschnauzer:
I'd be more inclined to go with a transaction tariff than a poll tax. Poll taxes were basically viewed in the real life US as an infringement on the right to vote, and were later banned in the constitution under the 24th amendment.
Click to expand...
Yes, I was thinking of this when I posted my initial reply.

Fedele, there might always be the case of someone who just joins the region in time to vote but has no posts/money yet.

It's not as huge a problem as in real life, but philosophically it would leave a bad taste in my mouth.
 
Shouldn't you first decide where the money comes from and how we will decide the rate of inflation? :P

If you just keep pumping money into the system, it would soon become worthless. So I'd assume that the more money people have, the higher prices will be. Will this also be true if there are more users?
 
Are you decided upon how money will be transfered? I'd assume that post count transferance will not be too popular, considering the spammers we have around here.
 
Would we see the same real-world problems with inflation arising if the government just "prints" more money when it needs it? Would prices necessarily have to rise just because there is more cash in circulation? If so, why?
 
Well, I'm not sure if inflation would be a bigger problem than it already is.

That is to say, since there's AUTOMATICALLY more money every time someone posts, then it's almost a given that prices have to rise every once in awhile if we want that money to MEAN something, ie. don't want people to have so many wads of cash that they can afford everything.
 
NeKront:
Are you decided upon how money will be transfered? I'd assume that post count transferance will not be too popular, considering the spammers we have around here.
Click to expand...
The script has a way of handling this. Someone's cash balance can be altered without having to interfere with their post count. It's fortunately very easy to do.

As for inflation, it may be necessary to lower the amount of money per post to help slow this down somewhat. Right now it's set at $10 (the default).

We could have something like a Federal Reserve System which could occassionally withdraw a percentage of everyone's money and hold it out of circulation until it might be needed...
 
If this is used to generate commerce (sales of "goods and services", then that means disputes could arise between a buyer and a seller.

This would mean there would be a need for an arbiter for the dispute using the civil proceeding language of the provisions governing the Court of The North Pacific.

(And since the civil proceeding permits any remedy the Court determines appropriate, that could lead to settlement of contractual disputes by the Court or even the imposition of a fine.
 
Grosseschnauzer:
If this is used to generate commerce (sales of "goods and services", then that means disputes could arise between a buyer and a seller.

This would mean there would be a need for an arbiter for the dispute using the civil proceeding language of the provisions governing the Court of The North Pacific.

(And since the civil proceeding permits any remedy the Court determines appropriate, that could lead to settlement of contractual disputes by the Court or even the imposition of a fine.
Click to expand...
Hey, it gives the court something to do...
 
The administration will not permit transfer of funds for political gain. We'll cut those trials off at the start.
 
@ AP: Oooh, ooh, who are you going to stab/****?

If Kumi gives me permission, I will post the PM she sent to me regarding inflation/etc. in this system. Turns out she's a larval economist. Who knew?
 
:cool:
We would need to enact laws regarding bribery, theft, extortion and "vote buying." Also, my (ahem) friend Candy has some services to offer that involve private chats... for a fee, of course.

This is Candy:

ec14058e.jpg


Unless there's a law against it, I'm guessing she could make a killing here.
 
As far as I'm concerned, the discussions of two consenting adults are no one's concern but their own.

(The money has been transferred, BTW. :yes: )
 
Deikura via PM:
...there is one major major pitfall in the plan as it stands.

Inflation.

There is currently an infinite supply of money, and thus, the price of anything created will skyrocket quickly. Money has no value unless there is a limited amount and everyone agrees to it's worth.

The first priority should be to make a pool of money, a limited amount that can be distributed forum-wide, even if that amount is absurdly high. Once that supply is tapped, it is tapped and should not be raised unless nobody is able to earn any money in any way shape or form.

The first thing that should be set aside from the primary 'pool' is 'wages'. A separate fund for minister/high-ups wages and post-count wages. Which means that the gov't or admin team (whoever ends up controlling these pools) has to have some way to make it back, through taxes, fees and fines.

What is not in these funds should be put into the Reserve and held until the government goes bankrupt. Then it may borrow from the Reserve. Also, normal citizens should also be able to borrow from the reserve, in case they need money. Increased borrowing lowers the interest rates on these loans. The interest paid on those loans goes to the government, while the reserve is to be kept the same, with moneys both present and due through loans.
Click to expand...
 
Someone called for a pool? Is 10 million dollars enough?

Problem now is that we would need to somehow edit the existing script to remove funds from this account rather than simply creating it. I think I might now how to do that, but it may not work perfectly the first few times around.

- Hersfold
 
Here's the modifed script. It has not yet put into action, but if somebody who might actually know what they're doing with this (*cough*NeKront*cough*) could approve it first, I'd feel a lot better about it.

Edited portions are in RED
<script type="text/javascript">
// Money code
// By Gornakle of InvisionFree.com

var sign = "$";
var name = "<br><br>Money";
var PerPost = 10;
var default_amount = 0;
var Cash_Reserve = 10000000
var Reserve_Funds = Cash_Reserve

// Directions:
// Enter name of member within this space:
// MID[" HERE "]="0"
// Enter their balance change in this space:
// MID["member1"]=" HERE "
// Positive and negative numbers allowed.
// Don't touch ANYTHING else.

var MID=[];
MID["Grosseschnauzer"]="11990"
MID["Cash Reserve"]="Reserve_Funds"
MID["member3"]="0"

// No need to edit below this line!
td=document.getElementsByTagName("TD")
for(i=0;i<td.length;i++) {
if((td.className=="post1"||td.className=="post2")&&td.innerHTML.match("Posts: ")&&td.width!="100%") {
sPost=td.getElementsByTagName("SPAN")[0]
if(sPost.innerHTML.replace(",","").replace('.','').replace(' ','').match(/Posts: (d+)/)) Posts = parseInt(RegExp.$1) 
uname = td[i-2].innerHTML.replace(/<[^>]+>/g,"").replace(/&nbsp;/g,"")
  if(MID[uname]){ EXP = (parseInt(MID[uname]) + (Posts * PerPost))+parseInt(default_amount)
  Reserve_Funds = Reserve_Funds - PerPost}
else{ EXP = (Posts * PerPost)+parseInt(default_amount)
Reserve_Funds = Reserve_Funds - PerPost}
var midR="Group: " + sPost.innerHTML.split('Group: ')[1]
var topR=sPost.innerHTML.split('Group: ')[0]
if(sPost.innerHTML.match('<!-- placeholder -->')) {
NewCode = sPost.innerHTML.replace("<!-- placeholder -->", ""+name + ": " + sign + EXP + "<br><!-- placeholder -->")
}
else {
NewCode =  topR + midR +name + ": " + sign + EXP + "<br><!-- placeholder --><br><br>"
}

sPost.innerHTML = NewCode
}}
</script>
Click to expand...
 
Hers, I sent you a PM at the IDU forums, where I was supplied with the script used there to generate cheeses exported instead of money, but which is also based on post count.

Whether it is the same one as the one you are testing here, I would not know, but it ought to be a basis for comparison if nothing else.
 
I'm watching Modern Marvels, and it has a bit of history of Wells Fargo.

Assuming that we still want post counts to be involved in the economy, can we treat them as a commodity, to be bought and sold, either from another player, or the Bank? This way, the Bank can control how many dollars are circulating, by adjusting the "price" of a post based on number of posts. This also prevents malicious spammers from being able to devalue the currency directly - any big old post streaks can be adjusted by the admins before they can be turned into (directly) negotiable currency.
 
That won't work, Hers.

I'll give it a try later, k?

Won't work at all. I'll post a better explantion later.
 
Not to mention that technically the cash reserve is not where the funding should come from. Post counts need to be tied to one fund, Minister-level salaries need to come from another, and the Regional Reserve needs to be immune to post earnings.

RR should be accessable to admins and the Minister of Finance (once the position is created) but admins would only have access to make specific adjustments as needed. Only the Minister of Finance will be able to grant loans from the RR.
 
This script won't work without some way of saving the data.

It currently uses Javascript, which means that it simply formats information given to it.

What we'd need to do is find someone who'd be willing to host an offsite script for it.

A better example would be this.

Imagine you have a word document.

you open it and make changes to it (bold, change some words, spell check, whatever).

Well, with Javascript you can do that, but you cannot save it. So everytime someone goes on the forum, they start with a fresh copy of the original document a reformat it, but can't save. Next time they log on, they don't have new data, but the same original document again.

With PHP or Perl, you can edit the document and save the changes, so it would be the equivlient of changing that word document and clicking save. When someone else logs on, they work on the changed copy, as it was saved after each change.
 
Grosseschnauzer:
Hers, I sent you a PM at the IDU forums, where I was supplied with the script used there to generate cheeses exported instead of money, but which is also based on post count.

Whether it is the same one as the one you are testing here, I would not know, but it ought to be a basis for comparison if nothing else.
Click to expand...
Got it. It's not the same, rather a shorter version that I do not believe allows us to alter cash balances separately.

Byard:
This way, the Bank can control how many dollars are circulating, by adjusting the "price" of a post based on number of posts. This also prevents malicious spammers from being able to devalue the currency directly - any big old post streaks can be adjusted by the admins before they can be turned into (directly) negotiable currency.
Click to expand...

If I alter the "cash per post" variable, everyone's cash balance goes down... it affects all posts, past, present, and future. I'm slightly confused as to what you're suggesting.

@ Deikura: So... we would need three accounts for this... one where the post-count based income is drawn from, one for Gov't Salaries (probably drawn from one of the other two), and a Emergency Cash Reserve for the Gov't... right?

@ NeKront: I think I understand what you're saying. So we'd have to have this re-written into something with a "Save" function for it to work right. Otherwise each person would be drawing their own post counts from a new 10,000,000 account each time they logged in, which wouldn't solve the problem of infinite cash at all.

:headbang:
 
Got it in one. Hers.

If this was a privately hosted forum, I could actually hard code that functionality into the forum itself.

As it stands, I think we're a bit stuck.
 
@Hers -

I am actually suggesting putting the per-post variable to zero. Instead, we make the aforementioned finite pool of money, and members then sell posts (via reduction of post count) to the Bank in exchange for currency. Currency can then get floated between members for their needs. This insulates the money supply from the post counts, in that any exchange between the two would necessarily go through an intermediary. If someone were to suddenly throw 10000 posts up and then exchange them for cash, the bank can adjust the exchange rate to keep the currency from devaluing, which, if someone were to dump that volume of gold onto the market, is something that would occur very quickly, in RL.

Should the Government (Bank) decide that they need more money in circulation, they increase the exchange rate to spur exchanges, and vice versa. Plus, this opens the way to speculation - one person starts buying posts low, hoping to sell them high. Government wishes to decrease the money supply, they can start selling posts at a favorable rate.

Also, if you don't want to play this way, you just don't sell your posts. Easy opt-out.
 
Hersfold:
@ Deikura: So... we would need three accounts for this... one where the post-count based income is drawn from, one for Gov't Salaries (probably drawn from one of the other two), and a Emergency Cash Reserve for the Gov't... right?
Click to expand...
The Regional Reserve is the master cash cow. Everything comes from it. Say approximately half of the initial value goes to the government salary and post count fund, divided between them. After that, the Regional Reserve would not be able to 'change' per se. It either has the amount at that point on hand, or both on hand and in loan values that have been approved by the MoF.

To simplify. At work I have a safe that must be maintained at three thousand dollars, at all times. No matter what happens, the total of that safe has to equal $3000. But I have to give money to my collectors ($150 each) and I have to be given money myself to give them breaks (another $150). Each time the person in charge of the fund has to give out cash we give it to them, and in return we get a receipt saying they owe us at least that much before the end of their shift.

So I get 150 from the person I'm relieving, give two collectors each 150, which means the bank has $450 out (accounted for on loan) and $2550 on hand, for a total of $3000. So the Regional Reserve essentially never changes, because the reciepts are as good as cash themselves.

The Salary and post-payout funds can be less than their initial levels, but never more than. Any overages made by fines, fees and taxes go into the Regional reserve as a deposit. It's basically the same thing in reverse. When the Regional Reserve recieves a deposit, it issues a reciept for that much. Therefore the deposit is owed in holding by the reserve and doesn't count toward the fund total (because it can be withdrawn at any time) but is always accounted for.

If a citizen takes a loan, only the principal is repaid back to the RR, while interest rates (set by the MoF) are placed as needed into the payout and salary funds.

If the salary and payout funds go broke, the fines/fees/taxes policy needs to be looked at, or all further payouts denied until they can be afforded, or, the government may borrow interest-free from the reserve, but this isn't a good idea, and should be considered a last resort authorizable only by a unanimus vote boy the cabinet. If the RR turns into a large reciept roledex with no on-hand cash, the region is broke, even if there is some money left in public trust (the two funds). Having control and not refilling the Reserve with new, created money is what prevents inflation (the concept of infinite money). This essentially freezes the proce of money while the reserve is broke, thwe only problem is that people can only spend what they have, and the economy cannot essentially grow.

But that's for another time... more advanced ones.

Ok, I'm taking my muzziness to bed.
 
How about an Income tax? A certain percentage of everyone's earning is paid say monthly (?) into the Regional Bank. This money would be used to give loans, pay government officials, etc....

That way the government isn't having to create new money all the time to pay it's debts as the income money is constantly generating... And this allows the citizens to support the government. And with it being a even percentage rather then a set fee the burden is split across the board. (And revinue earned from being an official or banker or whatever would be taxable).

*hopes that makes sense*
 
I think we should have a gift economy. We're a small scale community after all.

EDIT: From wikipedia: "A gift economy is an economic system in which the prevalent mode of exchange is for goods and services to be given without explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo. Typically, this occurs in a cultural context where there is an expectation either of reciprocation—in the form of goods or services of comparable value, or of political support, general loyalty, honor to the giver, etc.—or of the gift being passed on in some other manner."
 
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